Price of Freedom
by Annabel de Lioncourt
Summary: It was two years since I traveled with him, now on the Pearl again we go back to our adventures, only without the freedom of sailing alone. I don't know how long it will last but part of me doesn't care, as long as I get this little time we've got now.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: If I owned pirates I wouldn't be writing fanfcition. Two: If I owned Jack, I would be dancing around a campfire on rumrunner's island with him, not wasting time on this when I should be working on my novel**

**Warnings: drinking, violence, innuendos and the like. Remember these are pirates we're talking about. Also Jack is only mentioned in this chapter as is Will. They will both be in later chapters as will Elizabeth, Norrington, Annamaria (though she is in this one)**

_It's been about two years now since I last saw him_ I think taking another swig of whatever-the-h*** I was drinking. Swearing, drinking…what happened to the proper lass I used to be? _Clara, who dreamed of hunting pirates since she was eight?_ No, I guess I never was proper- but, for Heaven's sake, I was twenty one! I'm going to be a spinster soon!

Stupid infuriating Jack Sparrow. I took another long drink.

My brother trusted him (why he did, is beyond me) it was denial from day one for the both of us. I had long since abandoned my dreams of pirate hunting for dresses and sewing but being on that ship made me realize how much I loathed it all. I was pirate within a matter of days. Most of the crew just accepted me. I rather accurately guessed I wasn't the first girl Jack brought to sea. I learned to shoot a rifle, a pistol; Jack taught me sword play and I knew a bit of navigation but he still took his own time to fine tune my skills.

Filthy scoundrel. I threw the bottle into the sand, right off of the veranda of the beachside tavern.

God, I hated him sometimes. We fell _in love_.how stupid did I have to be to believe that Jack was really in love? My sister in law was certain that he was in love with her once. Governor's daughter didn't seem like the sort that Jack would fall for, but the pirate falling for a girl on the proper side of things—what an old cliché. I was his piratess, his Clare—to this day he's the only person to ever call me that; I'm the one who spent nights in the crow's nest hiding from the crews eyes with him, stealing kisses from each other. I kept that tamed hand on him, never letting him farther than I wanted him to go.

_Idiot Clara, think wouldn't you?_ I waved the barmaid for another round. I was going to be so drunk by tonight…

Two years ago, I didn't drink, and God help that man if I saw him drinking anything stronger than white wine when he was with me. didn't stop him though, once in a while I'd find him so hung over the next morning… that son of a b**** proposed to me. probably because he knew that was the only way he'd ever get me into his cabin after dark.

His cabin, that first time I was in there…everything in rich reds and blacks, and that nightdress he got for me. that was such an intimate gift, but it wasn't revealing, it was beautiful. It was the gown I was wearin the first time I had his tongue in my mouth. _I miss that…_

The barmaid came back with my next drink.

"'ello Clara." I was shook back to my senses, as much as my liquor addled mind could be at least "What brings you here?" It was Annamaria . prime example of that fact that I was _not_ the first girl he told he loved.

"What do you think?"

"You didn't lose the _Annabel _ _Lee _did you?" ah…my lovely ship, I loved her like Jack loved the _Pearl_, in the same lust for freedom way. _Just like you loved the Pearl…_ I shook my head back to the present

"No, but I lost a couple crew members. Bonny and Read left for Calico's ship. Old drunk, he needs as many good crew members as he can get. I let the rest of the crew off for a couple days. I needed some time to think."

"You and Sparro' never married?"

"H*** no," _so I take it those vows didn't count, that rushed ceremony given by an old preacher who's sight was failing, so as to not notice that a pirate was in his presence. That would make the night after a one night stand then, if that little ceremony counted for nothing_

"Oh, didn't think so, but rumors spread quickly on the seas,"

"I've been told"

"Where are you headed?" she asked me.

"Unconsciousness" Another drink

"Drowning your problems doesn't solve anything."

"Shut my eyes, call it a bad dream, pretend it's gone when I wake up."

"You're still in love with him, you don't even realize it." like she could talk, she worshipped him. Though understandably, he did after all save her and what was left of her family and near a hundred other captured 'cargo' from the plantation fields before they were even a mile out to sea.

"So are you. so is every other god*** wench in ever last d*** bar and pirate port in the world over." truth, even the maids at dear old brother's and his wife's house would giggle when the name was brought up. I wanted to retch to think of how many women he's kissed, he's loved, h*** for all I know married.

"Of course, but I don't think that they'd really leave the world for him. It's different for you. you both loved each other."

"Cut it with the sob stories." There's a woman in merry old England where I came from, by the name of Jane Austen. I hate her, _"oh I'll never love again"_ I hate those books.

"What's this?" Annamaria lifted my bottle and picked up the book it was resting on. "Austen? Are you joking?"

"No I'm not." I threw a half full bottle into the sand. So much for drowning my mangled heart

"What happened between you and Sparrow?" I didn't like talking about it, because for all I said about him, in reality, he didn't really do anything. We both wanted something else that we couldn't have together.

"We both wanted the same thing. We couldn't get it though." It was a complex thing, people usually ditched the person that they 'loved' because they valued their own needs over the person, but for me and jack, it was the one thing that we both wanted, but together we just couldn't have it.

"What?" I took awhile before saying

"Freedom. If we were together it just wasn't the same, every chase, every raid, every battle and fight wouldn't be filled with the adrenaline rush that makes it all exciting, the thrill that makes people come to the sea in the first place. Every bit of danger would be filled with fear for one of us, and what if—" here I blushed "what if we had children, the sea is no place for them, let alone a pirate ship and Jack would dry up and die on land."

"So you haven't seen him since? What's it been? Two years since you last saw him?"

"Since…well we had any decent time together. I refuse to be naught but a night's entertainment for him."

"Understandable." She mused, taking a deck of cards and a handful of dice from her pocket. I counted the dice; two people weren't usually enough to play but really, what was the difference?

"Ever play liars dice? Of course you haven't it's a game exclusive to the _Dutchman_"

"Rather not, how about plain old war?" she cut the deck in half and we started, the game was simple and required almost no mental activity. Until of course I found the Jack of Hearts in my deck.

"Clara you've got to do something about that."

"What?"

"I saw Jack in Tortuga about a month ago, said he was headed for south Pacific, you leave now and you'll probably catch him on their way back." I thanked her for the game and bought her a drink before I left. It was a rule of mine to never actually go searching for him, but for once… I thought I'd try.

Leaving the harbor I stood at the bow leaning over. Wind whipped my hair back and I breathed in the delicious taste of salt air and sea spray. One day I'd have to decide what I loved better, the warmth of love or the coolness of the sea. _Freedom_

That word echoed in my mind as the land shrunk into the distance and I was lost in a world of blue.

**First off, allow me to formally apologize for lengthy author's note.**

**AN: this is going to be the introductory to my OC, Clara Turner, if you hated it, that's okay because I can't usually stand OC pairings but I wanted to get Clara out of my old notebooks and into the computer and posted before the fourth one is out because Jack gets his own real girlfriend in it (FINALLY) but then I thought how sad, cuase I already invented Clara for him.**

**Because the original was written when I was thirteen it kinda sucked really bad, so here's a basic rundown of her.**

**She's Will Turner's younger sister by a year, because she was currently almost broke and working as a maid in London unable to afford passage to the Caribbean for her brother's wedding, Will had Jack bring her but they fell for each other on the way over. dear old brother hated the idea and Clara was involved fairly strongly throughout the second film even though the third is disregarded and Will somehow ends up as governor of port royal (don't ask, I was thirteen, sucked at stories then) Norrington is also after Clara's heart at times (even as far as proposing marriage) but her true love was always Jack so…yeah. They do go separate ways before the final end though as told here and this starts a list of meetings for them so that they have to choose whether to be together or keep to their separate—but free—ways.**

**R&R and thank you**

**PS I absolutely love the idea that the only reason Jack was first branded as a pirate was that he actually worked for the East India Company and freed a ship of slaves. **_**See original writing for third film, "I gave you a cargo to deliver, you chose to liberate it." "People aren't cargo mate." **_**Jack Sparrow the hero. Interesting.**


	2. Chapter 2

It was too hard to not want him back, all I waited for was to get to see him again, and every time we left each other I just wanted to find him again and I was so certain that the next time would be the time we finally stayed together.

I mulled this over in my cabin; it was nice, private a bit smaller than the _Pearl_. The wood was all stained light and it glowed in the sun the same way that the _Pearl_ hid in the dark. My cabin had curtains on it but they weren't needed the same way or for the same _reasons_ that they were on the captain's cabin of the Pearl.

_I knocked on the door of his cabin, before taking the little gold key to the door's lock off of the chain around my neck and going in myself. Jack gave me that key, I was welcome whenever and for whatever I wanted. Engagement suited him oddly enough, in the same odd way that being in a relationship did. I'd berate him for flirting with barmaids and wenches, keep him off the rum when I could—I'll admit, I tried to smooth out the rough edges of him that so attracted me in from the start. Perhaps that's why upon his leaving that time, I wound up in the embrace of Commodore Norrington. Bloody h*** was Jack mad then._

_ "Jack? Are you here?" the cabin was dark, only one black curtain open in the back of the cabin. The window itself was open too. The sea was beautiful, inky blue/black and calm with light ripples that made it look like…honestly, like nothing else in the entire world._

_ "Only a little bit." His voice was slurred, drunk._

_ "You told me to show up tonight, what is it?" he walked out of the shadow and I heard a match strike. He lit the oil lamp on the desk and I noted that he didn't look like he'd been at the bottle. He looked positively dashing. Dressed in his best and I could smell a faint scent of fresh water and…his hair was wet still. It must have been something special if he had cleaned himself up._

_ "I thought I'd treat you to something better than dinner with the crew." We always ate with the crew. There were some members that I hated, some that , frankly, scared me; but most of them were kind and told the most interesting sea stories I'd ever heard. I liked it. and the fact that Jack often sat by my side (unless he was the one telling the story) arm around me, hand on the small of my back, or even just simply entwined with mine made it all the better._

_ "oh, well…thank you." his desk had been cleared of maps, ink and log books, set out were two plates of lobster, a bowl of pomegranates, oranges and apples in between and two glasses of wine. "this is unexpected." I looked down at what I was wearing. My pirate garb and worn out hat (not second hand either, more like…fifth hand) didn't seem to match the environment._

_ "not for me." opening the narrow wardrobe that was nailed to the wall as was all the other furniture, he took out a long box. I'd seen my brother give the same sort of gifts to Elizabeth. It was a dress box_

_ "Thanks," I said taking out the red and black dress. I pulled off my jacket and hat and took off my boots. I wasn't going to undress anymore, I'd go behind the screen, but as terrible it was I loved to tease Jack. It wasn't a secret between us that he wanted more out of me than kisses and romantic dinners. His eyes were huge, watching me start to undress and I could almost see the steam of lust coming off of him. I undid three buttons of my shirt before walking with a bit more sway than nessessary behind the screen._

_ "Love, does it even matter?"_

_ "Betrothed is not the same as married, Jack." I said pulling the dress over my head. I walked back out, and he made a gesture for me to turn around. I twirled until the skirt was well above my ankles _

_ "Beautiful." He caught me by the arm and kissed me. his kissing was to die for, sometimes he led, other times I did, but always, always amazing._

_We had dinner and before I knew it, it was going on to the late watch. _

_ "Clare, would you grant me the favor of staying here?"_

_ "Talk like yourself please."_

_ "There isn't really anything we couldn't do, love. but I'm clearly can't force you. is it sin to just stay here though?" _

_ "No…I suppose not." I thought_

_ "We don't even need to sleep."_

_ "Oh?" I raised my eyebrows and said playfully "Then what would we do?" he said something I didn't understand "Can we speak English?"_

_ "I could teach you French." He said in a low, quiet voice before cover my mouth once more with his._

Lying awake in my cabin, I missed everything down to the warmth of him beside me, and even that light scent of rum about him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry for the long break before updating but this was a really tough chapter to write. It is longer, hotter, and (sometimes) a bit more humorous than the last chapters though. Clara's really grown up since I first wrote her, it's weird, like she's actually developed and grew up a lot. It's kinda creepy…anywho oh! Btw I don't pirates of the carribean**

The sea was calm as glass which to any sailor is frightening. We had been tossed far off track in a storm and the more I cursed the heavens for blowing me miles off course from Jack, the more I thought it was Divine Intervention for my own good.

I hadn't seen daylight in an age, I kept to my cabin, only coming out to give the crew orders. We had found Anamaria a week later and I begged her to come on board, at least I'd have someone to talk to. If I did find Jack I think that would have been it, I'd stay with him; give the _Annabel _to someone else. I was really starting to hate this. The past couple years I've been fine with this but lately…lately I've just had this overwhelming need to have him back. I looked out the window, scanning the horizon for anything of familiarity. Off in the distance was a small island, just a little spit of land really, maybe even rocks, but that wasn't what concerned me, what concerned me was the fact that there was a fire burning on it, not a signal fire either, just a camp one. Probably a marooned sailor.

But the closer we got to the island, the more I heard shouts and the occasional clash of swords: a drunken pirate party.

I ran the _Annabel_ even closer, to see if we could take a bit of advantage of their state and take a bit of their hoard. I didn't see a ship and through the glass I could see the silhouettes of pirates drinking around the bonfire.

_Bonfire on the beach…the skin of Jack's chest against my own, two glasses of champagne buried in sand up to the stem to keep from falling over and all I had on was that blue diamond on my hand_

Regaining my focus, Anamaria came up beside me.

"Wish Bonny was here, she was always one for this sort of thing." I grinned, I missed Anne, her and Mary had been through the mill before Jack and I chose separate seas, now Mary was off searching for the man she loved (who once loved me) and Anne was…well I'm not sure where she was.

"Keep to the shadows, just because they're drunk doesn't mean they're any less likely to shoot."

"I'll have the girls keep an eye for wanderers; if they've women with them they'd be like to wander out into the cover the trees." _But we were alone; we lay on the beach_. Anamaria snapped her fingers in front of my face. "You have to stop doing that. You'll be mad as Jack in a fortnight." I nodded, not bothering to hide my anger that she mentioned him so casually.

"Keep off the beach."

"You keep off the rum." It wasn't always rum I drank, and I didn't drink all the time either. Not like Jack did.

"_Clara you couldn't take alcohol if you tried."_

"_Want to bet?"_

"_Another French lesson?"_

"_Right then." I called over the Faithful Bride's bartender for a shot glass of straight whiskey, the highest proof they had. I drank it in one long swig. It burned like h*** and I hated the feeling and had the desperate need to cough it out but I knew I'd never live it down. I managed to hold it down, even though I wanted to retch._

"_Well, love, I'm impressed."_

"_You're a hard one to impress, captain. Now which one of us gives the 'French lesson' and which one gets it?" _

_We both did._

I wanted to retch again, watching those girls head out, Anamaria leading them ashore. She's only here to make sure I don't do something completely stupid, she's like me, refusing to tie down to anywhere. My only problem was that I still called London 'way back home', Port Royal 'back home' and my—_Jack's _precious _Pearl_ 'home'.

I did not just think that. I didn't just think that. I most certainly did _not_ think that.

I poured over a map at a table in my cabin. My shell collection, my clothes (most I still kept in my room at my brothers estate, just another one of those ties I kept to back home), and on the hook on the wall, a chain with a blue stoned ring strung on it. when I touched it, it was as if it was burning a hole in my hand. The key to his cabin door that hung on my neck hurt enough, that ring was just too much.

"_Jack, did you steal this?" I said before I even tried it on for the first time._

"_Paid for it with honest money."_

"_Where'd you get the' honest money'?"_

"_Sold a few things."_

"_Where'd you get the few things?" pirating, it's not like I really cared._

"_Does it matter?"_

I threw my hat on the floor and flopped ungracefully onto my bed, with my boots hanging off the side. This cabin was dull compared to the dark reds and sensuous burning incense and sweet smell of rum that Jack's cabin had.

I'm going to die. I can't do this. I vowed to not let him cause me tears anymore, but I couldn't help it. I still loved him, and ever since I thought about it the day Anamaria found me drinking the pain away, that's been rising in my mind like a terrible fish from the depths. Must stop quoting Tia Dalma's poetry books. They aren't around yet.

I got up and paced the floor, kicked off my boots and turned down my lamp. Shrugged off my vest and climbed into bed. …_If I shall die before I wake…_ that part always made me wonder. What if I died before I woke? Anamaria was my current second in command, she'd finally have herself a proper ship. Will and Elizabeth would cry, and—

I couldn't even let myself say the name.

Not because of my own emotions, but because someone was in my cabin. By the sound their gait made on the floor, it was a man. Growing up in London you learn a bit of self defense. I jumped out of bed and pulled out a dagger from my belt (thank God I was too tired to get fully undressed and into my night shift) I held the blade to the intruder's neck and…temporarily disabled whoever it was by, er, hitting my knee to…there.

I knew those beads. A dred was caught in my hand that I brought around to hold the knife. I knew those beads that I had toyed with on a night on the beach. My arms around a familiar frame… after he caught his breath he spoke

"Clare if you're going to kill me, at least find out it's me." this wasn't _possible_. He was leagues off course from me, on his return from the south pacific. I stood up and turned the lamplight up enough to see.

It was him.

"Hello, love, been awhile." He said sweeping off his hat and doing an exaggerated bow. I reeled back and slapped him. "Was that the fourth time you did that?"

"What do you want?"

"I saw your ship, horrible place to bring to harbor, really, you can see the top mast from the other side of the island."

"You're the pirate who's crew's on the beach?" he grinned and made a 'obvious' gesture.

"Why else would I be here, unless it's your dream. Though if this was your dream we'd be wearing a lot less." I didn't comment. That dream happened, and it lasted all the length of one short night. "That's why I took them off course. They wanted to stop on a beach: we had captured a cargo of spirits, and the men have been dry for over a month. I didn't want them to desecrate our island." Why did he have to bring that up?

"It's over, didn't we agree on that much?" I said.

"Clare we agreed we wouldn't get in the way of each others' freedom." His voice lost its cocky tone and I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Clare…" voice even lower, hand traveling up my neck to the side of my face, horribly romantic dark eyes meeting mine. I knew this series of events well; I lived through this pattern at least once a day for so long. I felt his hot breath as he spoke quietly to my ear, so quiet that even this close it was difficult to hear "I've missed you." three times I've been called Clare in so long, all within a few moments.

"I've missed you. and the _Pearl._" I added before he could get to high on his horse

"Which do you long for most?" I reached around for his compass, flipped open the top and didn't even wait for the needle to stop spinning before I closed it.

"It's only ever pointed one direction for me. I don't' even need to look." I'm not sure which of us leaned in first, but we both did and met in a warm slow kiss, as it progressed I imprinted every second of it into my mind, from his tongue tracing my lips, to my letting him in, to the slow, little game that ensued there; it had been so long though that even that felt so sexy and the air around us was so thick with feeling that the knife I abandoned on the floor could have cut straight through it. When our mouths finally separated, he lifted me onto the bed.

"It's not wrong you know." his hand running down my spine.

"we're…married." I agreed, he started to reach for the tie at the back of my neck where my shirt closed. "Jack, wait… not now, not…already."

"Starting from square one then?"

"Yes—No! no, not that far. I don't think I could wait that long either." I blushed. I pretended to not enjoy his love half as much as I did, but in the end…oh did I want him bad. "And I'd rather do this in our old cabin…" candles, silk sheets, and heavy curtains keeping out the rest of the world. "It hasn't changed has it?"

"The view has been quite diminished since you left." That night on the beach. I don't like beach mornings, and neither does Jack, he said the harsh light feels like a hangover, so we went back to the ship before dawn, and continued our night there. That room where I had asked Jack if I could join the crew, all we did...everything started on that ship and now it was so fitting that we finally slept there too.

"Same here." I said.

"Some of your…frilly things are still there, if you cared to get them." My silk nightdresses from China.

"of course, I thought I lost them sometime but—"

"Would it hurt you to leave for a while? Seems we have a bit of catching up to do, don't we?" his tone was suggestive but at the same time he sounded sincere. After all when our paths were close to crossing, I always went the other way it was so hard to avoid him. It _had _been awhile since we last met.

"Did anyone see you come in?"

"Seems you're girls are all out on the beach, enjoying my rum." Something told me he was planning this tonight. In my time with him I've learned that Jack has two frames of mind: planning and then making it up as he goes along.

We ended up in his cabin soon enough and to my amazement nothing had changed. Even down to the candles orange glow.

"Where've you been lately, love?"

"Oh, here, there. Most of the Atlantic and I've been up and down the coasts of the Americas. Cape of Good Hope, East Indies, Haven't see the east Pacific though."

"Beautiful seas, I'll take you there someday," I hung my vest on the back of a chair.

"Really? What makes it so lovely?" he brought up a corner of his mouth in a cocky grin.

"Hot sun, blue water, good wind, clear skies. White sand, shady trees, hidden clearings on tropical islands, cays for the crew to stay and get drunk while we……" he had an arm around my waist, hand under my shirt just above my trousers resting on my back, slowly moving up in the same seductive way I always remembered late at night, or after a third round of drink.

"Sounds nice. Sounds a lot like our home seas." Jack visibly flinched at the mention of home. "so we still have different views there." I needed a place to call home, but to him the word meant one thing: confinement.

"Roots are very fine for a sedentary tree, Clare, but not for me." it took me—perhaps both of us—to notice that while we were talking we were undressing. Not all the way, but boots, hats, jackets, all off. Jack took off his shirt. There was a new tattoo on his right arm, something in Chinese lettering that wrapped around the muscle.

"What's it say," I asked running the back of my fingers over it softly.

"'Freedom has a price, you're willingness to pay shows how you value it.' It, of course, being freedom." His hair was long again. He cut it short as part of a disguise he used when we married. After we left he put the beads back in, _beads I've toyed with in the dark…bare chest on my skin…bonfire…_

_Thinking for over a month you were with his child._ Not that. I refuse to recollect on that.

"And has it been worth it?"

"Clare," he breathed, like someone ready to berate their youngest. "On good days with a fair wind and a ship to follow, holds filled with treasure, it feels like freedom. Cold nights alone in the doldrums, then it feels like a punishment." He said alone. Could that mean that he _hasn't _been back to his old womanizing ways? No. must not believe that I'm that special. Must not get my hopes up.

"So you've been alone, no pleasurable company." Whore. Fancy words do not cloak what it means: whore.

"I've never been to places for temporary pleasure of company. Save once." I was _fired up_. I didn't think he'd really, I mean he does have _some_ morals but—"One time on a beach, but it wasn't supposed to be temporary. D*** my memory to the depths, I can still remember her taste." _One time on a beach_

"Was it anything like this?" I asked kissing him, lips apart, tongues meeting immediately instead of the slow soft kiss in my cabin.

"Exactly the same,"

"I'll stay tonight, Jack. We have the morning to decide where we go next."

"wherever we blow into port."

"I have the crew to think of."

"they can take care of themselves. We aren't far from our island, we could head there before sun up."

"'I hate mornings on the beach, they feel like a hangover.' Now that I've gotten more experience there, I believe you were right on that account."

"I am right very often, for some reason no one ever believe me."

"Because you always lie.

"Do not"

"There you have it: that was a lie"

"Was not, I do lie, but not always."

"You admit you lie"

"You admit you love it when _we_ lie."

"We aren't speaking of telling the truth anymore are we?"

"Only if you want to be."

D*** him and his stupid wit. he's too sexy for his own good

**So that's it for now, I'll try and update soon, but I've got school work, and photography work and art work and…well you get the idea.**

**R and R!!!**

**Iheartmoony7 signing off.**


	4. To The East Pacific

**You know, I can't believe I wrote these….i am an ashamed fangirl….**

**Ah, well, back to the story. This ch. does have some more mature content in it, but not enough to up the rating.**

**I do not own pirates of the Caribbean, Disney or anything that you know is not mine…**

**and by the way, James Norington finally makes his first showing here. no more spoilers, ON WITH THE STORY:**

I woke that next morning with a sense of familiarity I didn't have with the bed in my cabin even though that's where I've slept every night the past two years. Jack didn't even get up yet, though that might just be because he drank more than I did the night before. it had been so simple, so easy—_no_. the action itself may have seemed simpler than the first time but _I _ was the one who had been easy. Two whole d*** years of not knowing where he was or if he was alive or not or even if he was loving some other girl, and I still let him take me. And I _enjoyed it_. I know, I know, I'm crazy aren't I? I've gone completely mad, the sea water has finally gotten to my mind, or I've gotten a touch of scurvy.

Here I am lying _half dressed _in _Captain Jack Sparrow's _cabin, and I'm looking at the downsides of my life.

_I'll be his Clare again, perhaps this really is the end and we'll stay together again._

So were my thoughts as I scrambled out of bed looking for my vest to cover my shirt which was now torn down the front. I tied it closed and put on the top layer. It didn't look to bad, at least for pirate standards. I looked in the mirror. I looked horrible, my hair was tousled and I smelled like the rum we were drinking.

"Dounno luv, but I thought you look rather seductive." He read my mind by the expression in the mirror. Somehow he didn't look any worse for wear.

"Do you always look that bad, or is it that you just still look good?" with one hand holding the bed post as he leaned towards me and with his free arm held around my back, hand splayed out between my shoulder blades digging like a massage into my aching muscles—_what_ position did I sleep in last night?

"I told you that wasn't an easy way to—"

"Jack, please, no…" he lowered his voice and it became kinder.

"What now, love?"

"We go on shore and rouse the crews."

"I meant where are we going from here?" I didn't think that the words came from him. I must have been the one to say it, or else that blasted parrot had found its way inside.

"I…I want to try again. I want to try to live freedom—together." It was the soft sigh and close embrace that were so not-Jack like that concerned me. "So what's happened to you since..?"

"Crossed blades with some Cook fellow in Australia, stole what I thought was wet useless powder from an east India company ship that turned out to be 20 thousand pounds worth of spices." His eyebrows met in concentration, looking for some other outstanding event "Sunk an opium carrier ship. And caught a fleet of rumrunner skiffs." One evil ended to gain another. he was a never ending battle himself. "How old are you now?" the question caught me off guard. I was twenty three but it was something that mattered for nearly nothing.

"Three and twenty." Then came what I was daft to ask "How about you?"

"Would you believe me if I said I didn't know?"

"Drunk the knowledge away?" I knew that like so many matches of the times that he was a fair deal older than I, but I never was quiet sure. I supposed that he must have been in the autumn years of thirty when we met, for there was something in his looks that spoke of either agelessness or some sort of elder appearance. I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be the sort to lie about his age.

"Never was told. Mother up and died, my father didn't give a damn, who was there to tell me? I figured always an age that would put me between thirty five and forty, never sure where though." There have been many occasions where I could have shot captain Teague. Actually, there were many occasions when I could have shot a lot of people. Barbossa, for instance, at the brethren court meeting for killing my father. Davy Jones, for a mirade of reasons, Beckett when I thought he had shot Jack. Tia Dalma when I had missed the memo about the charade and thought that she and Jack were together, James at times—even my brother when he tried to send me to Rhode Island. And Jack, a couple years ago when I thought that he had gotten me—

Not going to relive that right now. Happy. I should be _happy _right now, I'm with Jack again, working on the Pearl again.

"What say you we reconnaissance on our island for a few nights?" I offered, not knowing exactly where it came from. Though, I suppose ever since Lizzie told me about her less than romantic evening marooned with him, I always thought that it would be something wonderful. In his dark eyes something lit before they met mine again.

"There was some aged port in the smugglers cellar." I was not much of a drinker in the past years, and only recently had become more and more in love with the bottle. I recall preferring wine at my brother's banquets though, and was welcomingly surprised that Jack remembered that. the island itself had a few different areas on it, it was a small speck of land, one of the many rumrunner sand bars. It had a few trees though that we made good use of, by anchoring ship on the north side, leaving us to 'procure whatever we may find in the way of drink' for the night on the south side of the island.

"Sounds nice, have a drink, kiss on the beach." That sounded much more like myself than the sultry siren did last night. "then we head back to the other shore and leave."

"Where then shall we go? You are a clever lass."

"I thought my captain was going to show me the east pacific?" I asked watching the curtains, curious if I should or shouldn't open them yet.

"There's a hell lot of company ships roaming around. The only safe place for any freemen like us to stop at is shipwreck cove. And I can't show my face there for nigh a century now."

"what did you do?"

"Teague."

"What did he do, that made you do whatever it is _you_ did?"

"I shot him. Not dead. Just going to be limping for awhile."

"Jack! Vile or not, he's still your—"

"He wanted to know if I had yet to name my successor."

"Oh…" most pirate lords didn't name a successor until they were on their death bed and for good reason. Few had their own children, who would be natural heirs, and many had to choose them from their crew or their…. 'friends' for lack of a better word. It would be easy to make their deaths seem like a tragic accident so that the successor could take their place. I could tell right now by the look in his eyes that this was not a subject that he wanted to approach. "Well what did you say?"

"I didn't know."

"For some time, neither did I." I bit my lip. After jack and I strayed apart I broke down about a week later and Mary had to drag me to my brother's house. I stayed in Port Royal for another week or so until I realized it had been much too long since I bled. I couldn't tell my brother, so I told Elizabeth. It would be scandal for people to find out, so she had me taken to the only place we could think to go.

The home of a man who was once hers, then once my finance. Admiral James Norrington. The thought process was that if I was truly what I feared then he could marry me. it would be a cover up, but it would save my brother from scandal and keep me out of the hangman's noose for consorting with criminals. Norrrington at this point was living in Virginia where he was stationed against rebel riots in the colonies. He wasn't thrilled with the circumstances I was in but took us in nonetheless. I wanted to die. James was dedicated to me and wouldn't let even the head maid of the manor come near me, or question me. everything that needed to be done for me he tended to himself. For some reason though I could not compare him to Jack. Elizabeth thought because I was young (pfft. I'm only about a year or so younger than she is) that I would choose one over the other for purely physical reasons but I snapped at her asking if that's why she turned down James for my brother. She said no, but he was never James to her.

He promised her that I was in good hands and she went home, I stayed there for another month, with no physical change and hardly left bed before he finally forsook my wishes and called for a doctor. I wasn't in what he said 'a family way' [**AN: an 18****th**** century term]** and that more or less it was a certain level of stress that I had gone through that caused it. James tended to me for a few more days before breaking down and begging for me to stay. I said I was sorry that I used him, but there was no way that I could. There was no way that I'd ever be happy there. if he were pirate, God help me, I'd have no idea what I'd do then, but he wasn't—he was a navy officer and I couldn't live in his world.

I explained this all to jack now, editing out how I cried to James during the first few days how I wished I had married him instead. Or how I gave him a kiss in gratitude for all he's done for me, when it feels like all I've done is hurt him.

"You're my successor. I didn't name you at the court, but you are."

"And if I die?"

"Elizabeth." He still had a grudge on my brother for some reason. Jack and Will were, though the two people I knew best, the ones I understood the least.

"And then?"

"Her son. Or Governor Turner."

"She doesn't have a—"

"William Turner, III. Born last June." It was now going on December. How long had it been since I had been home?

"How do you know?"

"Came calling."

"Jack?" why he would visit my brother with the knowledge that he'd kill him if he came around again? Exactly.

"Alright, had a run in with Lieutenant Gillette on the docks."

"Run in?" he ought to know better than to show his face in Port Royal. Will being the governor or not, he's bound by the law as the rest of the place. When jack came to the manor on the island it was directly there and as a guest, if he was caught in town he'd be catching himself in the gibbets.

"There was a cargo of ivory and gold coming in, followed it to the west side of the port until sunrise. Black ship at night, perfect, black ship in full sun 'Lookie here I am! Shoot me!'" to anyone else in the world the ta-da gesture that he made was everything but provocative but to me, his open arms were something much different than just another example of his theatric ways. I immediately found myself in them and set my lips on his mouth, which was already starting to form his next words. Now out of the stupor of the rum and the dark and fully awake and aware of every last move we made, and the slight metallic taste of his mouth from the gold teeth, and the sweet and bitter sensation from the alcohol, I kept on kissing him and wondered how much practice he's had since I left him.

"Jack, the crews…" I said while my arms were tight around his neck.

"A few more hours, what is a little bit of time matter to them, love" he said with his hands untying the knot I used to close my shirt. "What's happened to you?" he asked, and before I had time to question what he meant, he was undoing the last layer between him and what he wanted, the cloth I had started to wrap around my chest to keep my breasts in place. I had been a lanky, flat chested more or less tomboy when I met Jack. I never asked and never wanted to know, but the myths and stories all said the same—that he was a connoisseur when it came to women and that was one of the reasons why I felt that he first attractions to me were simply because I was the only woman—girl—on the ship. Now though after he still wanted me even with a less than beautiful body, perhaps some sort of otherworldly reward for one of the only virtuous decisions he made, gave me, if not a well sized chest, at least one that made it clear I was a woman.

"I grew up. They say that grieving can do that for you."

"No wonder you hear nice things about remarried widows." He finally found the last knot—

"Jack, not now…later, Jack…" I said. "Later, love." I took a deep breath and he closed my shirt, using it as an excuse to run his hands down my sides to rest on my hips.

"I'll get the crews," he said throwing his long coat on. "What do I tell yours?"

"Tell them I'm going off for a while, Annamarie is in charge and I'll meet her at Tortuga in three months."

"There's not much can be done in three months."

"I know but if you call for a couple years, Annamarie will insure that there's _nothing_ that can be done."

"Alright then,"

"Jack, I'm serious—"

"As am I, luv, I promise I'll come back as much of a man as I am now."

"You better." I said before tipping his hat back enough for me to get under the rim and kiss him one more time before he left.

I'd like to wish my crews smooth sailing but if I did, they'd talk me out of it, telling me that there was no way it would last, and I knew that was true and that I'd listen; but I wanted to leave with Jack.


	5. An Old Love

**And now enters a new character. Also makes full use of the T rating**

**I own nothing but my laptop and my twisted mind.**

"Jack, remind me why I never wanted to do this before?" I asked him as we finished. He had been treating me well, having the crews close enough to land long enough to catch a couple of lobsters and bringing up pomegranates from the galley, as well as having the cook make some sort of orange glaze for the fresh bread (not even hardtack, but actual risen bread) there was aged wine, Chinese green tea, and chocolate pastry (which he claimed to have made, but I didn't believe him).

"You chose until now to find out that you enjoy—"

"Think first—I can do lasting damage from where I am." I was sitting in his lap, looking up at him with one hand splayed across his chest, the other toying with his beard. A little sun was coming in from behind the curtain. "We've got to get out."

"East Pacific?"

"I don't want to end up like Magellan, we'll take a bit or a detour, I want to be fully supplied and we'll hit some unpopulated islands—"

"That's contradictory isn't it?'

"I wanted to see it, not get killed in it."

"There are some of the world's richest ports there. we could make it Madagascar from there 'The finest rum and—"

"Fiery whores'. Not on your life, mate." I said covering my chest and trading in the, er, 'skirt' for breeches. Madagascar had a reputation amongst pirates, both male and female, but women pirates were drawn there for its refuge, the men for, well, I don't need to repeat it.

"I thought we could trade for some new silks for you?"

"Kiss up…" though I had to admit, he knew how to talk his way out of everything. "Kiss me"

"No."

"We can go to Madagascar, but you stay on my arm the whole time." he still didn't say anything, "What happened to last night?"

"Persuade me."

"I'm not a woman of ill repute. I'll not trade time for what I want."

"Whore, no, but fiery, luv, I'll give you that." he kissed me one last time before we headed on deck to make port for the last time before heading for the east.

"Clare, what about this?" he nodded at a crate of rum of questionable legality for half the price of taxed liquor. I knew that we needed some alcohol for the water, to kill whatever foul disease would infect it in the summer heat but we had some on board, and while I had grown to like having something now and then, Jack would down the whole crate before we left the island.

"What about I kill you right here—or must I wait until the hangman gets the pleasure?" Jack and I turned around to see someone whom I prayed for his own sake I'd never see again.

"James."

"Clara, what the _hell_ are you doing here?" he demanded not taking his pistol's aim off of Jack

"Resupplying my ship."

"The _Pearl_." Jack corrected me. I grimaced a little. He couldn't take hearing the ship called 'ours' and she certainly wasn't mine, but calling her by name seemed to be the only thing we could come to.

"Shut up you," the he looked back to me "What, might I ask you again, are you doing here."

"I told you already, I'm resupplying the _Pearl_ with my husband."

"He left you."

"Is this going to turn into a melodrama, I'm not a fan of—"

"Enough from you." James said cocking his gun and tightening his grip on the trigger.

"I don't think you want to do that."

"Give me one reason."

"Clare." James looked at me from the corner of his eyes and other than that kept his gaze on Jack.

"What has she to do with this?"

"You love her." It was the blatant way in which Jack managed to refer out loud to any affections, let alone James's, _let alone_ those of another man's for me. James blanched if only slightly "Did you really think that she never once mentioned to me your, advances, shall we say?"

"She was living with me for months."

"She's been married to me for three years." I felt the need to interject.

"If this is really about me, then can I just add something—"

"You're sour, Norrington, over the governor's daughter?"

"Miss Swann was to be my wife, until you and that blacksmith apprentice saw fit to—"

"So that's it is it? You're going to kill _me_ because you've lost the only two women you've ever loved. That's just pathetic, mate." Now since Jack just interrupted him first, I feel that at least here in my commentary I should add my level of anger that James couldn't recall that "that blacksmith apprentice" not only has a name, Will Turner, but is my _brother._

"I'll kill you."

"I wouldn't if I were you."

"Jack, please…" I tried unsure if my standing between them would help or hinder the situation. James held the hatred in him to do it, I knew that; but I also knew that Jack was playing on his ace and James' weakness: his love for me. or what at least was once there.

"Clara has gone from me each time giving her excuse that she has an obligation to go back to you, with you dead, she'll get what she wants and you'll not know the difference."

"She's with child."

Okay, so first off, I was most certainly _not_ with child. Second, I am now a firm believer in that Jack makes up everything as he goes along. I shot him a look that said _what the hell are you doing?_

"If you killed me, you'd have to marry her immediately, explain why the early birth was still healthy and looks nothing like you. She's a known consorter with pirates, how long would it take the truth to leak out?" the look on James's face was one that I couldn't place. It was terror, horror, grief, and hatred. He pointed the gun at himself.

"I can still kill me."

"James!" and I'm ignored.

"Do what you want, but we sail with the tide."

"James I told you. If you make me choose, God help you because it's him."

A fight broke out in the bar across the road and two navy men ran out calling for James, who looked at us before falling back to his duty: he had the law and the crown to love after me, all Jack had after me was the _Pearl_.

"Now we just have to produce a child for the next time I run into him." I told him.

"I'm sure we could find an orphan somewhere who'd want to be a pirate." For some reason though, that idea didn't settle well with me. We were the last two Sparrows alive after all, and he the last blood one. I shook the thought from my head before I could voice it. Things were awkward for about ten more seconds before I tried to loop my arm with Jack's as we walked down to the ship when in the distance from the docks, a single shot went off.


	6. Captain Jack's Idea of Sympathy

**THIS IS NOT A SONG FIC, I just got the idea for it from a line in an old Billy Joel song my aunt had on her decidedly eclectic iPod. And if you're worried about James, you're in for a serious cliffhanger because we may not find out his fate for some time…**

"**Captain Jack will get you high tonight, take you to your special island"**

Of course the first thought that ran through my head was that James had done the unthinkable and I screamed, before Jack pulled me to his chest in an attempt to stifle the sound.

"Do you want to bring the whole navy down on us?" we had to leave, if James and the few we saw in the traders center were here there had to be more around. There was a rope ladder handing off of the side of the _Pearl_'s deck, it was part of a pulley system so that even if three people needed to go up and once, and there was only one person at the top, they could still pull down on the lever and get them up. Jack claimed its genius, but in it I saw a few mechanics that I know for sure were my brother's. he held me to him and took us both up the pulley rope. I went straight to the cabin, not helping set sail as I usually would have.

Jack knew that I was scared, he just didn't care about the _reason_ I was scared. I couldn't blame him; if there was some girl from Jack's past (and Lord knows, there's more than one) who killed herself, I wouldn't be broken hearted at all, but for his sake (if he did actually have more for her though than the fact she was female) I'd pity him.

"Don't show in the galley tonight, love" he advised. I knew how they'd be celebrating our escape, and I was in no mood to share stories of killing navy men.

"Did he..?"

"I don't know. honestly, if he did, does us a world of good."

"Jack not now—" I couldn't take his comments on the navy at that moment. I wanted to just…in a twisted way, I wanted to go back, make sure that James was alright, that the gunshot was part of the bar brawl made by some drunken sailor who was still at sea so much that the shot missed and hit the wall. I felt the lurch of the ship as it got off the dock and started moving.

"We're going to resupply the water on an island not far. There's an inlet large enough to hide the _Pearl."_ Really? I didn't _care_. We could all die of thirst for all that mattered in that moment. Who was going to bring water to wash the wound and tools to fish the bullet out of James's body, if it was still a body and not a corpse? "Love, you wouldn't go back there if you could would you?"

"I'd want to go help any man who might have his guts falling out a bullet hole."

"You know what I meant."

"I'm here aren't I?" I said with more than just a little bit of bite.

"But do you want to be?"

"Jack, I love him. Alright? He was there like a gentleman to care for me when you left—he's been far more of a man to me than you've ever been, you heard him! He was willing to raise _your _child, merely because of me. What officer do you know of who'd care for the blood of pirates? Besides how many women have you had tour our cabin while I was gone?"

"yet there are a few things wrong with that, it seems I'm a right son of a b*** whenever _I _ try to shoot someone, he tries to kill me and he's a gentleman? I have no child for him to be willing to care for—his idea of child care that you so dream of is shipping a lad off to England until he's grown out of schooling, or marrying a girl off to be some other man's problem."

"As if a pirate can offer better?" this side argument that sprung up didn't mean much to me in the instant it was happening, more so it seemed just like a continuation of the argument about James. But it didn't take long for me to realize that the mention of bloodlines brought temper to Jack just as quick as it did to me.

"Free—"

"Damn Freedom! It's what got me into this in the first place!"

"You'd be a beggar in London or a maid under your brother's employ if it weren't for me."

"So what are you, the human embodiment of freedom? There's more to life than freedom, Jack, when are you going to grow up and realize that?"

"how about her own choices? You'd be married to Norrington, she to whoever he saw fit to gift with a wife."

"Maybe she'd like that as much as I would." A girl with black hair and brown eyes, getting married with a pistol hidden in the flowers. She'd run like hell. If she had so much as a drop of Jack's blood in her, she'd sooner die than marry. I could see a girl at the helm of the Annabel, wearing my vest and boots and her father's cutlass. She'd take out a spy glass and navigate her without so much as making a ripple in the water. She'd have the siren blood from my mother's side, the purebred pirate of her father, and absolute rebellion of the age for her to be awash in.

"you wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"You said it yourself: you wouldn't be here if you did."

"You're the worst b****** I've ever met." At that he left the cabin and the moment he left I could hear him shouting orders to the crew. They'd be treated like slaves tonight for the fight I had with Jack. He'd have them running circles on the deck if there was nothing better to do. In light of the argument and in light of the fact that James might be dead — dead…-I could hardly bring myself to think it. I had no way of knowing, it'd take months for the news of his death to reach London, or the Caribbean or the colonies or wherever he was stationed at. I'd no know for much longer than that, perhaps even a full year. Or more. Maybe I'd never know. I fell across that forsaken, blasted, awful bed that I'd spent almost every night

"Clare?"

"he's dead…" I said quietly.

"You want to go inland with me?" I took my hat up off the floor and shoved a pistol in my belt, before wordlessly following him out.

There wasn't much animal life on the island other than some sea birds that were using it as a refreshing stop in their long sea flights. Just as we were, two sparrows, two tiny little flighty creatures lost on a huge ocean. I reached in the water that was pooling in the center of the island with cupped hands, hoping to get a drink of the first pure water I've had in weeks (all the water on the ship had to be mixed with alcohol to keep it from festering) and was shocked that the water was warm to the touch, almost hot, it tasted of minerals and would become stale if we kept it on the ship, but that didn't mean that it was totally useless

Looking back on the trial, and listening to make sure that I hadn't heard jack at all before I took off my jacket, vest, boots, belt and pistol, and finally after looking back one more time, finally my shirt and trousers and getting into the water. I had a metal basin that I could heat water in and wash with, but I didn't have a full bathing room like Elizabeth had and this felt like a bizarre luxury out of someone else's life.

"Like a princess…" I said quietly to myself.

"That's what you'd like?" I turned around quickly enough and unlike first grabbing for my gun, I reached for my shirt to cover my breasts.

"Jack…" I sighed with relief that it was just him.

"Nothing on you I've never seen."

"Doesn't matter." I muttered and slid completely under the water. It was hotter the further down I went and it muddled my brain. I came back up for air.

"I knew there wasn't any water here."

"Then why are we wasting time."

"There's still several barrels of water in the cargo that I'll miraculously find when we go back in the morning."

"There's only so long that they'll put up with our random stops and excursions."

"They can drink and riot when we're gone. Long as at least one of them stays dry they're fine."

"You said this…" I said crossing to the far side of the pool. "months ago you said you'd take me to the east pacific, 'cays that the crew can get drunk in' or something like that." as charmed as I would normally be by him keeping his word on something so slight and so romantic, right then it bothered me to the core of my being because he thought he could buy me away from my grieving of James by a few mere hours of physical enjoyment. If James turned out to be dead there was no chance of me ever getting over the blow; if he was alive, well, back to square one than, isn't it? Me and Jack against me and James? Which life do I want more, then I end up simply choosing the not-choice of running around wasting time and years in my own ship?

"Aye, I did." From nowhere he had two bottles of rum with him that he set on the rocky edge of the water.

"What is that for?" no way in hell was he getting lucky tonight. No way in_ he—_

"you don't like drinking away knowledge, but I won't see you killing yourself over this." I knew I'd regret it, I just knew that I would. I knew that after a fourth the bottle was gone, I'd get out of the water, a third was gone, I'd have jack unclothed, half way gone and I'd be hazy about what happened that day and when the last drop was gone, I'd be far too busy rolling around the captain's quarters with jack to even remember what the name James meant to me.

It wasn't a good choice, but it was a solution. I reached for one of the bottles, sighed and took the first swig.

If a morning on a beach feels like a hangover, then waking up with a hangover in the morning on a beach feels like hell. At least I was dressed. Soaked from the hot spring still but at least covered. My head felt like a battle axe was buried in the back of my skull. I knew I'd regret it but I sat up anyway.

"..I'm going to kill you." I muttered out, feeling sick. I might have taken to the bottle more in the past couple years than I ever had taste for before, but I still could barely hold liquor, and the full bottle took a toll on me that didn't seem to bother Jack much.

"What for, love?" my eyesight was a little hazy but I could easily make out the moon and some stars. What I thought was sunlight from behind my eyelids was a roaring campfire. "Can you walk enough to get back to the ship?"

"No."

"Right then." He said helping me up. I swayed unsteady.

"I am, Jack, I'm really going to kill you for this," for that he just laughed.

"Lucky for you," he through an arm around me and I was forced to lean into him for support. "You're still quite the seductress when you're drunk."

"Lucky for who? And who said I was drunk." I stood up straight and shoved my pistol into his chest.

**AN: gasp! Is this it? I didn't hear the shot go off, did you, reader? Wait a day (perhaps less) and we'll see if we still all love Clara or if she's become the wench that killed Jack Sparrow. **


	7. Who Is She?

**Just to remind you, the last chapter ended with a slightly tipsy Clara holding a loaded pistol to Jack. And I don't own pirates. And I'm not selling this, so I don't see why this matters anyway :P but rules are rules so I'll just add this one more time : I do not now nor will I ever own the rights to pirates of the Caribbean. :P [I wish]**

"Clare?"

"You're taking me back to that island." He smiled and I grit my teeth to keep from getting drawn in by his trademark grin. I cocked the pistol, "I'm serious."

"You really were playing the part of the seductress." I started backing him back towards the longboat we came out here on.

"Shut up."

"Was this your plan? 'Let's take him and fool around one last time before I throw away any resemblance to a life?' if I'm a second option, tell me that now." I could feel the threat to cry closing my throat so I shook my head. Absolutely not. I willingly just laid with him, didn't I? This wasn't some guard or enemy pirate I was trying to fight off, this was the same man who taught me. all of my sailing skills, the same pirate who saved me from a life on the streets of London—or worse, life in a fine household. I needn't add the whole, 'I'm actually _married_ to this git' part.

"If he's dead, it's my fault"

"Maybe someone else shot him. Us there or not, someone was going to. The Company doesn't have many friends amongst the free ports." A bit of this managed to get past the anger, the fear and the rum that was threatening total closure of my brain and as it registered I knew he was right. If he really was dead, and if it wasn't by his own hand, then it was going to have been inevitable no matter what. I reluctantly lowered my gun, jack took his hand off his.

"That's the difference isn't it?"

"What is what difference?"

"I'll pull myself together and keep myself that way. If James's bullet was lodged in someone else's heart, I don't think that I could."

"Who's someone else?"

"I'd say but I don't want him holding it over me, not yet anyways." A smug grin crossed his face.

Things went slowly back to their usual ways. I worked with the crew (I have no real titled job, Gibbs is Jack's first mate and navigator officially, not me) the crew used to call me a whore, I couldn't really blame them because what else would they think of a woman who has no reason to be on the ship and stays with the captain? I did a little bit of everything from cooking and mending sails, to working with rigging, to manning the helm. Every last thing but scrubbing the deck. The crew had long stopped complaining because I eased (if only slightly) their work load, and (so I had overheard from several at the scuttlebutt) improved the view. Jack and I didn't show any signs of what was really going on between us in front of anyone (except of course when we were in the galley, all drinking and telling tales, then he'd have a possessive hand on me at all times). And apart from Gibbs and Cotton, I don't think anyone even knew about the gold band that I wore on the chain that hung from my neck. Strange as this charade of sorts was, it was still normal, and I wanted to keep it that way. A schedule, a plan, a chart, I longed for some sort of regularity in my life. If I couldn't have a home, or even a home port, then I'd call the _Pearl_ home, even if I had to do so behind my captain's back. Didn't matter though because each night I'd draw shut the blinds on the windows of the captain's cabin lie on the bed, the double that had been nailed to the floor to keep from sliding about the area, with my pirate never anymore than a third meter away

At least this was how things stayed until we got back to the Spanish Main. We were docked in Tortuga, half the crew inland drinking to their heart's desire, Jack and I at the bar in the Faithful Bride.

"Lovebirds 'ere?" asked a red haired bar maid, as she set down my glass, taking her grand time even though she served Jack's without hesitation.

"In the most literal sense two humans can be." I answered, Jack was eyeing the maid—I was used to him looking at other women, as upset as it made me, but since I don't think there's been on night I hadn't known where he was, and more than half those nights I spent doing what every woman in every port the world over wanted to do, I couldn't really be jealous. I pulled up my sleeve enough to show the lass the new tattoo on my wrist: a smaller version of Jacks done in blue.

"Sparra's? Two o' ye? Yer 'is…" I almost pulled out my ring to answer, but to show any form of jewels in a place like this was a death wish. She was eyeing up Jack like she was wild eyed Mako shark and he was a small little fish, hovering in her view.

"What's it matter? You're not ever going to be it."

"Easy, love." he said.

"There was a message lef' for ye, Cap'n Sprrara." She said taking away two empty glasses from Jack and my still half full one.

"Let's hear it. Unless it involves death or dismemberment."

"I'll tell ye when I remember it." she responded coyly. There wasn't any real entertainment here, but there were always a few sailors with instruments in the back corner and the center floor had several drunkenly dancing couples. Sometimes I'd get Jack under the influence just enough to get him to dance with me, and I figured after that second whisky he was close enough to that point.

"Dance with me." I said half dragging him over to the center. With a bottle of I-don't-know-what in one hand, and me in the other we stepped to the silly reels and sailor's dances. I heard his glass bottle drop and shatter amongst all the rest of the din of the tavern and his now free hand reach behind me and pull me up against him in a way that would have us both arrested were we to behave so at a governor's ball. Dipping me a little lower, he pressed a rough kiss to my lips.

"Aye! Cap'n Sprarra!" the red haired barmaid came back over to us. "I remember that message for ye now!"

"What lass?"

"t'was one Angelica Teach, Spanish lady. Said she's a looking for ye." I looked to him and his eyes first held shock then some mix of fear or worry and something else.

"Really?"

"Aye, looked 'bout thirty or so."

"She comes around again, tell her I'm at shipwreck cove." He must have done something to her. She must have wanted him dead, I couldn't blame him for lying, and it wasn't that I cared if she would never see him. I'm not a jealous sort, but Jack is a magnet for women to begin with, and I didn't feel like finding out if any of his ex-lovers (because I just _know_ that there were a few. A good few. A lot probably) still wanted him.

That night I was brushing my hair out of the braids I had kept it in and watched jack in the mirror toy with his compass for about a minute before throwing it aside.

"bloody thing is broken." I turned about and looked at him, his knoll lined eyes showing the same sheen as those of a sad puppy.

"You've been out of sorts since that barmaid mentioned Angelica Teach."

"There's a reason, Clare." I swayed over to him, knelt behind his chair and wrapped my arms about him.

"what is the reason."

"not again,"

"What?" I asked innocently, as I could manage in this little plot of mine.

"You know what. I'm not telling you, luvvy, and nothing you do with your—" he made a flourished hand gesture that I wasn't sure I wanted to know what it meant "—is going to change that." It was an invitation to a game. I took a seat on the other chair at the desk and crossed my left leg, over my right knee, causing my nightshirt to ride up as high as it could get without showing the frilled undergarments I wore. Forget bare ankles, I was showing less propriety than the ill reputed women of Madagascar. Maybe not that little. Jack still was dragging a pencil across a vellum map of Nassau, and I laid my legs over his lap.

"Remember Arabella, the lass I was friends with as a boy?"

"Yes."

"And remember how you weren't upset?"

"Yes."

"Don't be mad this time."

"Alright, go on."

"Angelica was a lass I lived when I was about five and twenty. Somewhere around there." a fury of fire lit behind my eyes. "You said you wouldn't be upset."

"You weren't sleeping with Arabella."

"I was with Angelica a lot less than I am with you."

"When's the last time you saw her?"

"By Jones's Locker, it must have been fifteen years. Met and left each other within a year and a half."

"And if you run into her now?"

"She better hope you're pistol's out of shot."

"Good answer."

**And…not the best ending, more of a bridge chapter. Jack didn't handle the whole james thing well, so its only fair if clara freaks out over angelica…. Btw angelica is the new character in the pirates films, apparently a REAL love inerest for jack, instead of just him chasing after anything in a dress. Not that I don't think he felt for lizzie, he did, just not as much as will, and not the same way as james.**

**Until next time!**


	8. Safe? I'm a pirate, what do you think?

**There really weren't any definite ways to do things safely once upon a time in the seventeen hundreds. That's all I'm saying to those of you who are wondering if these are the last two sparrows the world will ever see…****hint****…****hint****…**

I had the day off from work. At first it confused me but seeing as it had been a month since our not so friendly island excursion, I had a vague idea that I should have gotten some extra sleep that day, because I wasn't going to get any that night. I said earlier about half the nights and how we spent them, but really it wasn't _half _the nights because our watches were at different times—there was a schedule on the ship's log and it would be a grievance to the crew if the captain didn't follow his own rules. Though, really he was breaking them by brining a woman on board (the loophole was that I invited myself aboard, not him bringing me on).

I drew up some routes that would take us through the east without running in with any navy or any other pirate's territory. I cleaned up and fished my kimono out of the back of the wardrobe, shook off the dust and washed my hair, pinning it back with the two long pins like the girls in Shanghai wore it. I even opened the bottle of perfume I nicked off a Company ship we boarded the week before. It belonged to the captain's mistress. I could have written to Will to write to the captain's wife that he had a French woman hiding in his cabin but instead, I took her perfume—brand new, bought at Hong Kong. Oriental cherry blossom and some sort of muskier scent. Now all that was left was to wait and see if Jack was dining with the crew or with me.

"I love the Italians." Was the first thing that I heard when he opened the door to the cabin.

"Dare I ask why?" his crew had gotten a cook from Italy while I was gone; I must say in comparison to the British cook, he was quite an improvement.

"Who else was genius enough to put rum in cake?" he said setting a silver tea tray with a small sweet scented cake on the desk. Then he got a full view of me and smiled his usual half smile.

"You look…ravishing."

"Er, thanks." He pulled the two pins out of my hair and it fell, still a little damp down my back to its full length.

"I like you better like that."

"And I like you better sober. Captain."

I think it gave him more than a little of an ego boost to know that there was a girl who wanted him so much. he wasn't getting any younger and while his age had yet to affect his looks (or anything else about him for that matter) I think he liked the fact that I was there for life. Whenever the end of that will be. The more curious thing was how he was so...in…love with me. At least that was what he had always had me convinced of. I swore those three years back that it wasn't love; it was lust on his side, pure infatuation on mine, but in the dark cabin under red Asian silks it was difficult to believe that the emotions that ran so high for me were not returned.

Elizabeth had warned me, and I've been through a scare a few years ago that made me never want to lie with a man again, but drink or no drink he was too much for me and he didn't even have to get me to give in, because half the time—_I _was the one who wanted it. there were a few little methods that I had heard about in my not so sheltered couple of years sailing solo as a pirate, ways to 'meddle with a man' without the concerns that come with it. Still though, I was irresponsible. I always was when it came to the most important things. I was sometimes too tipsy to remember, or just didn't care. Actually, as I thought it over that next morning I realized it was much more often than not I wasn't very careful.

I didn't think much of it until the day I fell fifty feet out of the ratlines.

At first I was fine, I was doing my work and I was heading up the ratlines for my favorite night watch job: look out in the crow's nest. Whether Jack ever decided to join me or not didn't matter, I loved being up there, so close to the stars. But I was only six feet or so from reaching the side of the platform when a sharp pain came to me, like a sudden wave of nausea and it came on so fast and so strong that I lost my gripping.

Now if I fell onto the deck, I would have smashed my skull open on the wood, but somehow I fell down the right side of the lines that I was in the ocean, but still, in the dark the ocean wasn't much better. And it was cold. A rope ladder came down and I shouted up that I didn't need any help, it didn't change anyone's mind though, and they didn't let me climb up but pulled me back up the side of the ship. It wasn't even Jack who saw it happen, it was others who saved me but by the time I had retched up the seawater I'd swallowed, he had come out of the cabin to see what had been going on.

"I'm fine, really." I insisted as I pulled my hair up under my hat the next morning.

"you fell off the ship eight hours ago."

"It was an accident—"

"Inexperience can—"

"Jack, I'm not the same sixteen year old lass you brought to Port Royal." I said trying to settle him down. True, I was only just then twenty three, but I felt so much older. It felt at once as if it had been yesterday I first stepped foot on the _Pearl_ and also as if it had been a lifetime. Either way it didn't feel like the seven years it had been

"That's what scares me." was the last thing he said before I walked out of the cabin into the sunlight. I was fine that morning, and most of the afternoon. But after we came up from the galley from dinner I was out of sorts and took a short walk around the deck before I retched again over the side of the ship. Marty saw, and the first thing I said with fear filled eyes was

"Don't tell Jack."

"Don't worry, ma'am." He said

"I'm _fine_." I added as he walked away, more to convince myself than him.

I didn't even get changed into a nightshirt when I got back to the cabin; I just fell on the bed.

"Someone told me you weren't well."

"Since when do you worry so bloody much?"

"'Fever on a ship—"

"-means a funeral on the sea'" I quoted the old saying. "I know, but I don't have a fever, I just had too much seawater that's all. That's it!"

"You're not working tomorrow."

"Yes, I am. Jack, they already call me your concubine, if I don't show I'm worth my salt, they'll think even less." He set a hand on my forehead, like a bloody doctor or a nursemaid.

"Fever."

"Not fever, I'm hot because of _you_!" after the words left my mouth I realized that it wasn't the _best_ way to word it. "And not like usual either. I just don't get why everyone is making such a fuss over me…" I sat up and undressed, just to show that I wasn't too tired to. It was the shirt that tied in the front and as I undid it, he was completely unfazed by my exposed chest.

"Not tonight, love."

"Who are you and what the _hell _did you do to the Jack I know, who would jump on any excuse to—"

"You're ill."

"Sea water." I said again.

"Just get some sleep Clare." I rolled my eyes and closed my shirt back up. I was asleep far before he joined me.

After a week of being ill in the evening (and sometimes at sunrise) and not feeling ill any other time of the day, I gave up and tried to work with the crew again, only to have my loving captain order me off duty.

"How many times do I have to—"

"Clara." He said sternly.

"You called me Clara?" I asked confused, I don't think that he had called me anything but Clare… well, ever. he ignored this though and kept talking.

"When…when was the last time you…bled?"

"Oh Jack, no..." I moaned in annoyance and disgust. I didn't speak of bleeding to anyone, and I wasn't going to start with the man I was sleeping with. And did he really think that was what was bothering me?

"When?" he demanded, casting a look at the door as if to make sure it did not unlock and open itself to allow an audience.

"I am _not_ having this conversation—"

"Think Clara."

"I don't know, eight, nine weeks ago? A few days before we landed on that island—" it was like an invisible iron hand wrapped itself around my throat and cut off my windpipe, by the look in Jack's eyes, he felt the same.

"There's the explanation then."

"No, I'm careful—" he actually laughed at that.

"Sorry, love, but I don't remember ye ever being 'careful'"

"Well you make it hard to, blame yourself." Son of a… jack slumped in his desk chair and rubbed his temples with one hand, taking out a bottle of brandy from beneath the desk with the other. I glared at him "If I can't drink neither can you." to which he responded by looking me straight in the eye and taking a swig. "I hate you."

"I've heard it enough love, it doesn't bother me anymore."

"I mean it!"

"Still doesn't matter."

"I wish I was with James." It was a scar that still hadn't healed on me, and immediately tears welled up as I thought of him rotting away in some makeshift grave in the eastern islands.

"no you don't."

"I'm going to die. All women die at sea when this happens."

"Your mother didn't." I bit my tongue. This was going to go on all night if I didn't stop trying to pick a fight. Shaking with disbelief still, I climbed into the bed. About an hour later I felt arms around my waist. Not trying to slide under my shirt, not at my hips, just there holding me.

I woke up to knocking on the door.

"Captain, there's some other bloke's colors on the horizon!"

"You heard him Captain, we ought to get out." I said as we got out of bed

"Whose colors!" he shouted, too close to me.

"Rogers, I think." Jack sighed and under his breath added "brainless…" the something I couldn't hear.

When he dressed and left he told me to stay in the cabin but after obeying for ten seconds I followed him out.

"What happened to staying?"

"What happened to me being an equal member of the crew?"

"If that be Rodgers we're fine. If it's who I think it is…"

"Jack?"

"We're in for blood." The word brought me back to the talk we had last night and I crossed my arms over my front. In the commotion I slunk back to the cabin without getting noticed. Just after the door shut behind me jack came back in and pressed me up against the wall wordlessly kissing me fierce.

"What-?" was all I got out. After another few moments he stepped back.

"in case that's it."

"Who is it?"

"Blackbeard." He said with one last hurried kiss as he shoved one of his twin pistols into my hand.


	9. Revenge

Jack never said anything about there being an end to anything. The _Pearl_, pirating, the navy, or even death. There was no end for him, just the horizon. So all I could think when he ran back out of the cabin after kissing me and giving me the gun was that this was finally it. No more fighting after this. I've heard everything about the famed pirate, including that he had been killed in Ocracoke. Unless he was the devil himself, like his tales claimed him to be, there was no way that he was here.

I brought my hand to my mouth and brushed my lips with my fingertips. I checked to see that the guns were loaded and I added my cutlass (a sword was good for show and dueling but if the crew was as deadly as their captain, I opted for the more deadly choice)

There was no fighting when I got on deck, but something much worse. All the crewmen were lined up, according to rank (there isn't much ranking on a pirate ship, at least not on the _pearl_, just Jack and Gibbs at the front, followed by the rest). Weapons were laid out before them. No one else was on deck but one pirate I didn't know, who dressed to show off that she was a she. Most women pirates wear their clothes merely to hide that they are female, this woman was wearing clothes that clung to her curves and chest, close fitting boots to show off thin legs, and her black hair down under a feathered hat.

"Will the captain of ye step forward!" she had a thick Spanish accent and as I looked from where I was crouched behind a deck cannon, her ship was titled Blackbeard's _Queen Anne's Revenge_. Bloody hell.

"Angelica Teach." Jack said, stepping forward. I've seen random girls slap him before but this one reached back and punched him hard.

"ye are the most—" after that she broke off into Spanish and I couldn't figure what she was saying, but it didn't sound good.

"Where's dear old dad?" was Jack's only response to the former flame

"Dead you son of a b***h." She spat on the deck and looked back to her ship, floating dangerously close to ours. "The crew in the lower hold. Captain in the first brig." She shouted to a rabid looking crew on her ship, waiting like wolves. I ducked back down and bit my lip hard to keep from crying out. This just didn't _happen_ we never did anything so dangerous that anyone got seriously hurt, Jack wasn't a good pirate by the standards of Blackbeard and the others of his lot; we preyed on small slavers, sitting crews in longboats and their "cargo" as the new captains of the once-prison vessels. Arms dealers for the crown, navy ships carrying over standing soldiers and sailors to spy on Americans. Rich merchants spice ships. Never anyone armed and never anyone who'd kill us. I heard wooden planks being laid across, the crew, _my _crew walking the death march over, Jack somewhere with them.

I was just fearing that I'd retch again and feared that if I did I'd be noticed when I felt a cold, round, metal object on the back of my neck.

"Ye aren't a powder monkey." The villainess said, "Get up." I stood shakily with the gun still on my neck. "What are you? Entertainment?"

"No, I'm not! I am part of this crew, I—"I leaned over the side and was violently ill, worse than the night before. A smile crossed Angelica's face, but the narrowed eyes did not speak of anything but wicked amusement.

"I'm touring this little raft. Ye can come, go with your crew, or die here." I followed her across the deck as she shouted orders in Spanish and her crew tied her ship to ours but drifted a safer distance away. "This be the bilge rat's den?" she grimaced opening the cracked door with the tip of her cutlass. She walked in, no doubt expecting a…unkempt, rum soaked room, but instead finding our semi-well kept hide away. She turned to look at me with no lack of confusion

"You be Sparrow's mistress?"

"I'm Captain Sparrow's—"

"Doesn't matter." She cut me off, as she rolled up priceless maps and charts that had taken Jack a lifetime to collect and my box of favorite jewels, shoving them in a leather satchel. I grit my teeth against the material losses. She looked at the bed, I kept it pristine as I could and it was easily the finest thing in the room, the silks on it out pricing even the my fippery and trinkets. She lifted a corner of the sheet, feeling the thread quality of the rich silks and laughed to herself. "Ye spend a lot of time here? Are ye paid, or a volunteer?"

"I be his wife." Immediately she went stone faced, I would have said in heartache usually but in her face the emotion was just was shock.

"Sparrow?" I couldn't blame her, his name and the term 'commitment' did not go together any more than Cutler Becket and hoopskirt did. Bad mental image. Bad, bad mental image. "Do ye know what you're doing? you're a young lass…" I always looked younger than my age, since I was a child, and at three and twenty probably looked like I was but eighteen or nineteen. I suppose the look on my face answered her question; no I hadn't a bloody idea what I was doing, and I barely was registering what was going on. Angelica took a few sheets of parchment off of the desk before leading me back over to her ship. I was still shaking when I found her gun jammed at me once more, this time at my stomach and I immediately recalled: she could shoot me anywhere on a different occasion and though it'd be with fear, I'd take a bullet, but her kill shot would take two lives, and I wasn't going to let that happen.

"Stop ye're shivering." She growled as we climbed over to the deck of her flagship. She pushed me towards the captain's cabin, then inside.

"Shut the door." She said. Her cabin was centered like a navy's was; her desk in the center, sleeping arrangements (in this case the usual hammock) off to the side. She dropped the sack of our maps and my jewelry on the floor and set the parchments on her desk reading over them. I didn't know what they were; Jack must have written them when I was asleep, because all that he was doing when I went to bed was drinking brandy straight from the bottle.

"Addressed to the governor of Port Royal. What attachments lay there I wonder?" I kept an expressionless appearance the best I could as she taunted me. "_Mr. William Turner, Clara is—_and crossed out," she turned to another sheet "Same address, _Clara needs the—_and crossed out again," I was shaking again, and I felt like being sick, this time though I think that the cause was standing before me, not in me. there was only one thing written on the sheet from what I could see from the other side of it as she held it, her eyes widening in disbelief "_Clara is with child._" She read. "How _bloody _stupid of a wench do you have to be?"

"He loves me." she laughed at me again, with a new tone to it that sounded almost like she pitied me.

"Do you know how many women in how many ports all over the world would say the same three words about the same man?" I opened my mouth to speak, but she kept on "Don't think that you share his heart when you share his bed. You'll learn that not one of the men of fortune out there know what love is. They think that it's something they can buy from the right saleswoman."

"I'm the only woman he's known since I met him." I tried my weak, young sounded argument.

"What are ye? Nineteen?" there was now a sound of personal disgust in her voice.

"Three and twenty. I'm old enough—"

"I've known women your age, who have eight children already, to husbands older than Sparrow. Age is nothing, just that you're alone now, lass."

"So now that I've gone and had my fun, I go back and drown myself on land?"

"Women like you don't belong at sea."

"Then what women do?" I demanded of her gaining bravery; after all, I had three out of four aces: I was Jack's current lover, his wife and with his…his… But she only had that my crew was under lock and key. While my crew may not be the bravest, most honest or most intelligent they were the most sneaking, weaseling lot I'd ever met and had a specialty of getting out of trouble.

"Women who've learned to think like men. There is no space for emotion out here; this is only nothing, that's all the sea is. Look out on her and that is all there is: nothing."

"It isn't nothing. If I married on land and lived there, then I'd be spending the rest of my days—"

"I was raised in a convent; I didn't meet any men until I was fourteen years old, save for priests. Hardly even going outside, you don't need to tell me what prison is like." she was yelling her words at me and I shrunk back "You jumped on that old bastard just because he was freedom for you—lass, I've got something to tell you, everything you know is a lie—"

"You're just spiteful because he left you."

'What will become of ye then? Ever think of that? Do you really think that he's going to want a wife now any more than he did at twenty two?"

"No more than I ever want or still want a husband, whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same. You see nothing out there, he and I see freedom." I held eye contact with her even when I heard the unmistakable click of a gun under the table—her father was infamous for shooting crew members like that.

"You're a coward, _niña_." She smiled "A mere little thing, a slip of a sailor-"

"And you're a cold hearted b*tch"

"Now what?" she asked setting not only the ready pistol but also the other one from her left as well.

"Pardon?"

"What?"

"And you're slow, add that as well. What are ye going to do with your child"

"I'll have her at my brother's manor."

"So the governor's sister is the concubine of Jack Sparrow?"

"Wife."

"Doesn't matter, you've told me all that I need to know." she said with a grin like a demonic cat. "You're not with child, you probably had a touch of scurvy and your system is just getting over—"

"But I—"

"And if you drink at all, even half as much as sparrow, that would have slowed you down a bit too. Give yourself another week before you give up entirely." It made sense. Not a lot, but really it did. Lizzie even said that she had the same issue when she went to sea the first time as an adult. It was a weird feeling—I was, honestly more than just a little disappointed. Though I was much, much more than relieved. "Now, with my new charts, and your information, you are going to open the doors to Senor Governor of _Puerto Royale._ I'm sure there's enough gold and wine to keep even my crew happy."

"My crew—"

"They will either be put overboard now, or sold to the brits on the island for hangman's fodder." Not if my brother has anything to say about it. Sure, he has to be the governor and all, but if anyone of my crew ever ended up there, they seemed to simply vanish from the lists of prisoners and then from the prison itself. "And don't think that your brother can take care of you, you're going to be dead to him once he says where you've made your bed for the past years." I almost mentioned how before said governor was in his position, he more or less _introduced_ me to jack, and knew very bloody well what bed I've been in for the past couple years (okay so maybe he doesn't know the exact details of two weeks of marriage then two years of nothing before this year. That won't make him happy, but if I'm there, he can't kill Jack). As I said, I _almost_ mentioned this before realizing that it worked more to my advantage for her to think that we were going to be killed once there

"But you're Spanish. The island is British, what do you think they'll do."

"They cannot harm a ship if she flies a white flag."

She dragged me outside and called over a man I presumed to be an officer, she said something in Spanish or Latin or whatever and looked at me

"Do you mind telling me what the h*ll you're doing with me?"

"You get the second brig." The second cell…she mentioned "_captain in the first brig_" now she won't even let me near him? Hell hath know the fury of a woman scorned indeed.


	10. The Escape

**This does have some parallels to the side story (to be uploaded eventually) of Clara's first experience as Mrs. Pirate Captain, because I did that one as a character sketch, comparing with how she aged between the two years she was on her own. **

**Also, I'd love if you would give me a review/comment on your favorite line(s) & why.**

I kept a stone face the best I could when, with no small amount of excitement, I noticed that the two cells were kept side by side, not one across from the other as they are on the _Pearl. _It may not be a private cabin with silk bed sheets, but it was a start. As soon as they left I slunk to the floor and let out the breath I felt as if I had been holding since we were boarded.

"Jack? Are you there?"

"Clare?" it was black as pitch and I could barely see but it was still enough. He was alive, and there that was all that mattered

"I can't believe you found her attractive."

"She probably thinks the same of you. Bloody hell, what did she want with you?"

"Mental torture. she read your letters—why would you want to leave me with my brother! He'd force me to the altar with any navy man, James or otherwise if he knew what I was carrying!"

"You'd be better off." After a pause, I figured I should tell him sooner rather than later.

"I'm not."

"not…?"

"No."

"Then why are you passing out, falling off of things and sick as a dog?"

"Angelica said scurvy, and I thought about it, it hasn't been quite two months since I…"

"I don't want to revisit this—"

"Since I bled and if I caught a slight bit of anything while in the pacific, well, anything could be the reason. But regardless, I think this is the only thing I agree with her on. And ever will. So I'm staying with you, no matter what you do or say to stop me."

"She always lacked that, the ability to be forceful."

"Love, we're locked in separate slimy old cells in the _Revenge._ I think she's—"

"I didn't mean with that." then it dawned on me. _I_ tracked him down, before that _I _ played him into marrying me because I refused to be touched until then, even before that _I _ made him keep me on board when Will thought I was going back to England. Seems as if I can be quite bossy at times, but by the way he was talking, it sounded almost as if—

"You like it when I order you around? Don't you?"

"I hate it; I hate it more than hangovers, the crown, the brethren court, monkeys, government in general, Spain, the East India Company and all the slave colonies in America. No one tells me to do anything."

"Then why…" _are you still screwing me? _"Are you still with me?" I softened the wording.

"Because it's intriguing, beguiling, and—"

"And it turns you on." I said smugly

"I didn't say that." he added quickly

"But if I told you to take me, right now, back to your cabin, lock the door and let me have _my _way with you, you wouldn't even waste the time it would take to say 'anything you wish'?" even in the dark I could hear his breath hitch.

"There's something in that for me though."

"I said _my _way with you, not your way with me."

"The difference being?" I'm sure he knew a few of them, but he was going to make me say them out loud.

"Just cut to the chase, you _do_ like that I am 'forceful'." I had been trying to keep the entertaining (at least for me) conversation drawn, to forget that we were locked up, but when I walked over to where he was standing, there was iron caging between us. "Damn."

"I know." his voice wasn't depressed just because we were trapped.

"You thought you were getting lucky tonight didn't you?" the few seconds he took to answer told me that he was lying

"No—"

"Really? We are _locked up_ and you wanted—wait, who's guarding us?"

"No one. Port royal is three days off, apparently."

"That's it, we take a long boat at night, warn my brother and then he can have someone capture Angelica and her crew—ours just look like innocent prisoners who've been locked up too long" or raggedly pirates who've only been there a couple days. He reached through the bars and touched the side of my face.

"Brilliant."

"Except…"

"What? I like your plan. Except for the 'we' part. I don't fancy having him do unspeakable things to me to insure you don't end up like you did last time."

"How do we get out?"

"I have a knife somewhere…" I heard him going through his coat pockets.

"You have a _knife_ and you couldn't have told me an hour ago?" I said he's a mad genius, I never said he was smart. "Give it!"

"No!"

"I'm better at locks than you are, always have been."

"I unlocked you didn't I?"

"Keep talking like that and you'll lose the key." I hissed in response to his unnecessary innuendo. He handed over the knife, and I got to work on the cell's padlock. "Got it." the door didn't creak and I got to work on the lock to his cell.

I listened when he told me to wait exactly one minute before following him on deck, and when I found him lowering a long boat. There was blood on his hand and as he tucked the knife back in his jacket pocket, I didn't ask if the watchman would wake with the morning.

"Our crew?" I asked as we reached the _Pearl_

"You said it didn't you? Let them go as innocents captured by the _Revenge_."

"Just because I said it doesn't mean I think it will work."

"Doesn't mean it won't either, love." he added, searching the deck for any guards. When all was clear, we went below to the smugglers' hold and took out spare cutlasses, pistol and shot. There was a second smugglers' hold but it was deeper in the ship and black as pitch.

"You're afraid of a little dark, Clare?"

"No. I'm afraid of what lives in the dark." I answered flatly

"Cut us free from the ship," honestly I was more than happy to take on the lengthy task myself. Each rope was tied with thick intricate knots that after attempting to undo on my own, I took out one of the daggers from the hold and started sawing it off. By the time that I had finished four out the ten or so, and moved on the fifth it was no longer there.

"I thought this was my job!" childish? Yes. But I tried so hard to hold my own and tried so hard to show that even though I was a girl—woman, now—I was still worth my salt before the mast. The sad part of it was I didn't know if I was trying to prove this to Jack, the crew, or myself.

"Let's pretend you didn't say that."

If I felt useless with the ropes, once we were up in the ratlines, unfurling every sail, I felt like a burden. I knew my way around a ship, of course. When I was seventeen I joined the crew out of boredom more than anything else, on the passage from England. What a fated trip. My brother should have known better than to trust old Jack with his sister. Even after that I so much preferred staying on with the crew, not because I had fallen for him, but because this was what I wanted. Adventure. Excitement. Anything but withering away as a maidservant in London. Sure Jack played a part eventually in my staying a pirate but when I was eighteen James—_(he can't be gone, he can't be gone)—_had hand-trained me as a pirate hunter, as a navy sailor and privateer. So well had he taught me that when he showed me to Lord Beckket and that old git thought I was a boy and handed me my letters of marquee and sent us on our way. I had sea water in my veins in place of blood and God help me I'll stay on the water for the rest of my life.

But to be so completely useless made me ache. I didn't want to look like a girl who's just following around her man, hell or high water. True, I was doing that as well but this was my home. The _Pearl _was as precious to me as it was to any man on board.

"luv, don't fall…" Jack was holding a hand out to me, I hadn't known that I was staring off in my reverie but I must have looked ready to drop down again.

"I'm _fine_." I said climbing down on my own.

"I still don't believe you. or angelica. But you have more of a reason to lie." I ignored that statement for about a minute.

"You don't trust me?" I asked as he turned the helm hard to the north. Port Royal, here comes your favorite couple…

"If you are, then you know that I'm going to send you right back to Elizabeth—"

"—What do you have against Will?—"

"—before you could even try to convince me to let you stay"

"No. I could last. I'll have her come with me, she'll help me—what am I saying? I'm not in circumstances, I'm not having a child, and certainly don't plan to any time soon. I'll sail with you until we die and long after that!" I had progressively been getting louder and louder and after I said that he ended my ranting with an abrupt kiss and then got back to the helm.

"What will we do to sail when we're skeletons?"

"Join with Jones? Find the sunken Isle de Muerta? Fountain of youth, whatever. Have Tia Dalma use one of her" I waved my hands in the air in magic-y gesture "spell thingys!" Jack looked at me curiously.

"You've been with me far too long." He said tying a rope around the helm and to the siding of the platform where it was located on deck.

"I'm starting to think so."

"That's not a good thing, sweetness." Says who?

"What's with the rope?..."

"Steer the ship while the crew is otherwise occupied." I was exhausted, still not sure if I was with child or had scurvy, and I wanted to at least wash my hair to get rid of the stench of the brig.

"Not tonight…Please, I'm not up to—"

"Get some rest, Clare." I nodded gratefully and as I turned back to our cabin he grabbed my wrist and planted a firm kiss on my lips. "I'm serious, get some rest."

As much as I hated to admit it, I was hot for him as much as he was for me, and if he didn't suggest it for the morning I would have. It was futile to try and sleep when all I could feel in my broken dreams was his loving me, the ghosts of his touches in all the sensitive areas of skin on me. I sat up, beads of sweat collecting on my forehead. I dragged myself to the wash basin and rinsed myself off, stripped off my sailing costume and fished through the wardrobe for a nightshift. An old white one—the one that I had first worn when I had snuck into Jack's cabin at night—that he had made quick work of while we were on our island trip. It was torn from the neck to my stomach and while I had it on it would stay shut, but all that was needed to get a full view was to brush the fabric aside. I crawled back in bed and tried to fall asleep.

"That just might be my favorite thing you own." Was the voice that woke me up in the morning. I was lying on my side, and he was seated at the desk, as if he had just been watching me sleep. It would have been terribly romantic if it wasn't for the fact that my nightdress had fallen open in my sleep, showing my pale chest in the sunlight.

"Come on Captain Sparrow." I said shifting uneasy—I could barely sleep last night and I wanted this. A lot.

"I already told you I don't find your ordering around attractive."

"I think you do." I sighed deeply and stretched out on the bed "Take me." I commanded

"Is this a game?"

"Of who fails first?"

"Four years you made me wait."

"You're the only man I've loved. I've waited my whole life. What's a few more years?" he grinned "Or months…weeks…days…" now at the edge of the bed, climbing up over me, "Or _moments_…" I was bluffing, there was no way that I was going to wait more than another minute for him, but at least he thinks I won.

"Only one?"

"Aye, Jack, you're all." smug son of a—

"Wouldn't think it,"

"Am I better than that?"

"I'd say, but I can't let you think that you won." Git.

"What do you mean? I w—" I still couldn't speak once we were actually going at it,

"What was that, love?"

_Stupid_. _Git_. Was my last coherent thought until noon.

"When are we going to be near the port?" I asked drowsily.

"By nightfall."

"Should we…oh, I don't know, be _presentable?_" I asked. Or at least dressed. I think the second is a tad more important.

"I'm not going ashore."

"I'm not going alone, I'm not leaving you alone, and I'm not going to show up at Will's alone."

"That last part is why I'll be right here." I didn't know if he meant right here as in the ship in general or right here as in bed waiting for me.

"No. You're coming."

"You do make me do that." I was confused for half a moment

"Head. Out. Of. Gutter." I shouldn't have wasted the breath. And although I shouldn't, and although I complained about it, I did like his humor. "If Will heard you say that, he'd string you up in from the balcony, wouldn't even bother to wait the time it'd take to get you to a gallows."

"There's nothing he can do. By law you're under my control."

"That's stupid."

"Do I have to pretend I care? What's stupid?"

"Women are treated like slaves. We aren't men's property and we aren't something you should be able to trade or sell."

"Love, we'll revolutionize domestic law after we survive infiltrating the governor's house, and getting back our crew."

**Always did see Clara as a bit of a feminist. And something funny, I never—ever—called her "Clare" it was always "Clara" when I read this to Sikana83 (who is sadly no longer on this site) and when I wrote notes on it, she was Clara; Jack is the only character to call her Clare, except for James who did once, and she stopped him. Not because she hates it, but because it was just something Jack did.**

**A little forewarning here, the next chapter will be REALLY long. All of this chapter, and the next one (and probably the one after it) were all at first one long document that I started writing and never stopped. So when it got to be over twelve pages I took a break from writing and made a few chapter breaks. **


	11. Lacking any real piratey activities

We draped white canvas over the furled black sails disguising her as a merchant vessel, set trip wires over the entire deck and sealed the smugglers' holds and locked our cabin (though, with glass windows, it was still easy to get in from the back of the ship). From the back of the island it was a few hours march to the governor's manor.

I didn't think that the servants would be too excited to let a pair of pirates in the front door, so there I was throwing rocks at Lizzie's window. After the third one she came to the window, gesturing for us to wait. She came down and let me inside, once she saw Jack her expression changed.

"I thought—"

"I'd be with James?" I didn't blame her, the state she left me in. She led us straight to a private parlor, Will was sitting there and there was already a tea set laid across the table.

"Young Mr. Will Turner." Jack said with a gallant bow. "Or the middle Mr. Will Turner,"

"Why should I just shirk my responsibilities as governor and not have you arrested?"

"Is James alive?" I asked before he had any more time tear into Jack or vice versa.

"Who?" Will never heard me call him by his first name

"Admiral Norrington." I stated bluntly. Lizzie sighed, and I immediately felt something in me break.

"No." came from my lips in all air, no voice.

"He's in London." Lizzie said quickly but looking at Jack and not me; she was gauging his reaction to my concern and from the corner of my eyes, so was I but I couldn't see much unless I would turn and make obvious my curiosity. Lizzie was still looking at Jack with incredulity as if _he_ was the one supposed to be dead when she interrupted Will.

"Clara if you don't mind me asking—"

"It doesn't matter," Will added, glaring daggers at Jack, "Why the hell are you here?"

"Blackbeard's coming in." Jack said, business like. I played along with him

"He's got our crew, and he knows that you're my brother. He's hoping to use us all as hostages, either that or threaten you that he'll tell London you're dealing with pirates."

"Where did he find out?"

"He took papers from my desk."

"There were letters to you and Elizabeth." I couldn't call her Lizzie in front of others. "About me."

"What for-?" Will asked and Lizzie's eyes doubled in size as her look of incredulity went between me and the pirate in the chair beside mine whom I was trying desperately to avoid looking at as to not give into the temptation of abandoning my chair and sitting on his lap.

"_Really_? Clara, didn't you learn before-?"

"Neither did you! Will Tuner III, where is the little pup at anyway?"

"Nursery—and I'm a governor's wife! You—you're a sailor! You can't risk this!" Will had a hand on the ornamental sword at his side (I'm sure he's the first governor to make his own swords) and I feared that this just might be the last straw and the time that the two men finally murdered each other.

"I'm not! This idiot mistook a touch of scurvy and a slight fever for his wife being with child."

"Clare you have to admit that the time between that and the island was—" I shot him a look to shut him up. I may have lost a good bit of my decency during my time at sea, but not so much that I was alright with him discussing decidedly _private_ details of my life out loud.

Will left almost immediately to get the guard ready for "Blackbeard's" attack; Lizzie showed me to a guest room, Jack to another.

"erm…Elizabeth," I pulled her aside "We keep one room." she nodded and just gestured both of us into the room she had pointed out for me first.

"Well…" I said, shrugging off my jacket, and unbuttoning my vest, "That went better than I thought it would."

"I'm in one piece, so's he."

"it's a start." I said jumping onto the thick feather mattress. Ours was nice, but not anything like the luxurious furnishes that a governor could afford. I was just about to invite him over when a thought crossed my head and I spoke up. "You're not going to do me here."

"Why not?"

"Because Will's room is to our left, Lizzie's across the hall."

"Two rooms? No wonder he's miserable—"

"Decent couples keep two rooms, plus a wedding chamber that usually serves as a birthing room and a death bed." Some things are nice about living on a ship. Perhaps my favorite is just the plain fact that it isn't big enough for the three separate rooms. The look on his face, as well as the flush that was rising on mine told me to come up with another excuse: common sense came over me and I sighed. "One of us should be down there, to show the crew where the Pearl is."

"I'll go." I was hoping he'd let me, it'd be interesting to see the reaction of the navy when they find that it was not a vicious pirate they'd be fighting, but an out-for-blood woman. I pitied them, any day I'd choose to fight the pirate over the woman.

"Come back in one piece." I held to his coat and didn't let go until I kissed him good-bye. Rarely did he see need for any extra affection, but I don't think that it was really necessary to hold him captive.

"Don't I always?" so far, yes he has, but I'm sure that his time's almost up. Cannon shots were still going off in the morning and when Will came home bloodied and exhausted it was almost the same time as the night before when he left.

He was breathing heavily and as soon as the butler shut the door behind him, he collapsed against the wall, grabbing a candle mounting for support. It snapped under his weight.

"Should we bother to replace that again?" Elizabeth muttered. Ignoring her comment, he spoke to her,

"Clara's going to be here for a little while."

"No offense, but I was expecting to leave with the tide." I tried, almost every time I came here for a friendly visit he tried to get me to stay with them.

"On what ship? The _Black Pearl_ was chased out." _Jack is a dead man _was my first reaction to Will's words

"By the _Queen Anne_?"

"The _Revenge_ was headed south, the _Pearl_ north east."

"Why?"

"I needed to have Captain Gillette send scouts around the island, looking for Blackbeard and his prisoners; just to not raise suspicions that the prisoners were a pirate crew. I know where Jack's crew went, but where's Blackbeard."

"He must have ran too—"

"I know he's dead, Clara." He locked me in his gaze and relayed the truth to him.

"His daughter. There should have been a woman on board, she's taken over for him, and got mixed up with us—"

"Clara I know you don't follow rules of decency but—"

"She wasn't with Jack and I, she tried to _kill_ us." Did he really think that I'd go so low as to let Jack keep myself and another woman on board?

"No one saw a woman, she must have gotten away as well. That explains why Jack ran,"

"I would have told him to," he stared me in the eyes for a long moment before he accepted the answer.

"Alright then. Elizabeth, get her to pass for a younger girl, we can say she's my sister visiting from her studies in France." Lizzie nodded before walking me to her room. I'd have to pass for about seventeen. Twenty three was nearly hopeless to marry and I would have been an embarrassment; I could have said that I was married but then what of my husband? Society wouldn't allow me to travel without him.

Truth was, I wouldn't have told him to run, I would have said we could stand and fight, or we could run. I didn't want another break of time away from him.

Lizzie had in her wardrobe not only the fashionable dresses that I saw her wear but also several sailing costumes made of canvas shirts and trousers.

"You haven't given up either?"

"Not since Billy was born, no, but before that I'd have the head maid's eldest daughter put on a wig. She'd hover in windows long enough for people to think I'm here and I'd go with Will on… political trips." You mean pirating trips, Liz? I knew them, they wouldn't actually go about stealing things but they certainly wouldn't all have been trips for his work.

"I knew it." I grinned

"It's over now, at least until Billy's old enough to go to sea." Four generations and counting of me going to sea, the Turners always had seawater in their blood but Will and I did even more so with the splash of siren blood from my mother's side.

"Which is why I'm no having children." I added bluntly. I'd not leave the sea for more than a week, and then only if Jack and were…unable to sail at the moment (it was an Amazon trip, on our way to the strait of Magellan and we were a little too distracted in the midst of the flowers and brightly colored song birds and the solitude to be in any…_position_…to be on the ship)

"You don't have a choice."

"Yeah, I do. I can be careful, stop sleeping with my husband and/or just throw him overboard" preferably the first. The last two went hand in hand because the only way I would go through with option two, was if I had already put three into action.

"Do you both not want a son?" she questioned

"You always wanted a girl." I retorted, leading her into my point and reasoning

"A boy will continue the family name, we're young we can still have a daughter." She said, as I knew that she would

"Exactly—Lizzie, it doesn't matter! If we had a boy, I'd feel horrible because I want a girl; if it was a girl, they'd we've have to have another one hoping it's a boy."

"You'll change your mind as you get older." She said with a knowing, and dare I say _motherly _grin. It disgusted me.

"Do you think he wants children running around the ship? Not to mention, I love him to death but he's not exactly the role model type." Lizzie handed me a slippery satin dress to wear under the outer part of the dress and petticoats and a corset, and other unmentionable undergarments/instruments of torture.

"Get on whatever you can yourself; I'll lace you up when you're done."

"I hate being a woman." I complained with pure bitterness.

"I'm sure you don't all the time."

"Being in bed with a pirate is probably the only perk of the gender." I tried to keep my mind away from the candlelit cabin, and in the conversation with her.

"Agreed on that now, get changed—"

"Do you mean that you and Jack?—"

"I call Will a pirate." She said much too quickly. I made a mental joke to torture Jack into the truth about his time with Elizabeth when I next saw him.

In no less than half an hour I was bathed, dressed, brushed, combed, rouged and sprayed with a rose scented perfume. Looking in the mirror I realized how little I looked like my mother with her dark hair and eyes; my hair that refused to say if it was light brown or golden, and the green hued eyes. I looked like a lady, not the pirate mistress of Jack Sparrow. In fact without the knoll, the hat, the men's clothes, I couldn't even picture the lass in the mirror as anything but the image of innocence and the modern 18th century woman. I recalled how I thought about being like a princess in the hot springs—if being a princess meant wearing all the strings and cords and whalebone siding that forced my…slightly larger than Elizabeth frame into a dress that was several inches too small for her, then I wanted nothing to do with royalty. I realized then that if I never did meet my pirate captain, then this is what I'd look like.

"Don't you look lovely?"

"I need a drink." Was my reply as I went back down the stairs slowly taking care to fall

"There's always a pot of tea on," she said with a touch of sarcasm that I caught immediately.

"Your drinking coffee now, aren't you?"

"The tea is for show; ever since the king's taxed the clothes off the backs of the colonists we've had coffee, and tea only when there's visitors." So the governor is an ex-pirate, a pirate sympathizer, and now supporting the tea-tax rebellion of the American colonies.

"Any rum?" I asked hopefully

"Jack's rubbed off on you far too much."

"Even he said that." I added, trying to sit down on one of the plush chairs in the sunlit drawing room. It had a view to die for, looking out over the island, the fort and the harbor with all the ships coming and going. I felt at home here; alone, yes, and a little broken but still at home.

"When did you find…?" Jack.

"I found him south of here on a little island. This coffee is great, have any sugar?" I didn't want to be forced to talk about my sea life with her, or with anyone.

"Has the captain been treating you well?" she tried, as if asking if I liked the weather in the Caribbean.

"Erm… Explain?" she raised her eyebrows and gave me a look that told me I knew _exactly_ what she meant. It's a good thing that I was already red from the rouge and the tightness of my clothes. "Alright, he's been treating me quite well enough…" well enough? When I really thought about it, he had been treating me like a bloody queen; sure he's a pirate and not really _buying_ me all the gifts, but from his own share of the prizes he gives me jewels, perfume, and gowns (alright, so he enjoys me in the 'gowns'), not to mention the fine wines and sweets we get every so often, of which I get first pickings before they're taken to the galley for a free-for-all.

"Is that all? He's jack sparrow, there must be something that keeps him loyal to you."

"He keeps loyal because he knows if he strays from me, I'd _dismember_ him." I said with a sweet smile, as if we really _were_ talking about the weather.

"I remember on your wedding day; you were so…scared." She said with a level of surprise; it was to be expected, last time she spoke to me alone was just before we left in a carriage to the chapel that was further in land (blind preacher, to not notice the pirate in the room, or the names on the marriage certificate), and I was throwing up from the fear of what I was in for that night.

"I wanted him to marry me, and I needed to give him a reason to." I did use it as the main reason that he should marry me, and it concerned me, if only at times like these, if it was true that the long nights were the only reason he kept me.

"Clara, you were so young when you met him, I wish you were old enough to—"

"I was three years older than you were when you married." I was twenty-one, Elizabeth and Will were only eighteen. "I knew that I loved him."

"But you didn't, and still don't, know if he returns it."

"I ran back into James." I said.

"And—?"

"I thought he might have killed himself. I still stayed with Jack."

"Was it worth it?" she didn't know my extent of…of love that I held for him. For either of them- but I've had my mind made for a long time and it wasn't the role of the navy man's wife that I chose

"Don't know yet. I'll wait until he comes back for me." I didn't need say that it was the pirate I was waiting for, not the soldier whom I didn't dare let my thoughts dwell on.

"So…'well enough' you say?" she grinned like a cat. I knew she had to be curious, what female wouldn't want to know what it was like, an evening with captain jack?

"Some days he gives me off—I do work, just so the crew doesn't get mad that I'm there, and I like working—but the days I'm off I keep to our cabin, wear the finest silk, and relax…and sleep because…well, on days I have off, it usually is code for 'get some rest today, because you won't tonight'."

"Only on his terms then?"

"oh no, not at all." I relayed to her a few stories that I'm too ashamed to say they happened to put in writing. She was red and I was even redder than before when we finally had enough.

"Is he any good?"

"How would I know? I love it, no comparison though." That heat started rising in me again and I felt ill. Lizzie said the first time that she wore a corset ended with the start of hers—and eventually my—adventures. Jack cut her out of it. I'd kill to have him in here to cut me out of this now.

"I've no comparisons either, but I could still tell you—"

"My brother, and that's just gross." As hot as I had been feeling, I couldn't help but shiver at the knowledge that the person I was talking with was also doing things with my brother that I couldn't picture anyone but Jack and I doing.

"I'm just explaining that whether you've known others or not, you still know when you've found something good." I better have. I know that he hasn't seen any other woman since me, but I knew that I was not the first. Or the second. Or the third and I don't even want to try and guess how many others there were before me.

"He's got to come for me soon. I'll go insane if he's not here within the fortnight."

"It hasn't been a full day and you're losing your mind."

"I'm going to dry up and choke."

"You aren't a fish, you know."

"Might as well be." I was. I was going to be completely insane, and then proceed to die. Though, I might be spared that and just suffocate in the corset before there's a chance for that.

**Like I said earlier, one very very very very very very long chapter divided into a few. So now Miss Clara is stuck on land. For anyone who's ever been drawn inexplicably to water and stuck on land for far too long, I hear for you. just been told we aren't going to the seaside this summer and I think I'm going to be the first human without gills to drown on dry land :P**

**Don't own anything, btw**


	12. Dear old Dad knows, but I wish he didn't

**And so here is the next chapter of **_**Price of Freedom**_**. I don't own anything, blah, blah, blah…oh, and what do all you lovelies think of **_**On Stranger Tides**_**? I liked it enough, but the critics hated it (though they hate most summer movies). **

I still thought that I was going to drown before the _Pearl_ came back and Lizzie reminded me almost daily that it wasn't physically possible.

"I just don't see the point in this…" I grumbled as she showed me how to use a pattern and measurements to make a little set of baby nightclothes. Don't get me wrong, I loved my nephew dearly, but he stood for something that I feared as much as death: a cease to my life at sea, my freedom, and my life.

"Be careful! You missed a few stitches on the corner." I chucked the infernal sheet of fabric at the wall; Lizzie sat hers daintily on her lap. "You'll have to learn to do this yourself eventually." She poured coffee into the tea cups that sat on the table between us. Stupid little china dishes, they were so fragile, so useless…so…

"You could hire someone to do this for you." I said. The lives of the rich and royal I never could quite understand.

"I'd rather do it myself; and Clara, I'd be thinking hard about this if I were you." I rolled my eyes. For the past five weeks I've been here, I've probably heard the upcoming words at least every other day. "You can't keep going on so carelessly, if you don't plan for it, and you have to come back here it will be more painful than if you knew what you were in for and—"

"You've no idea what it's like at sea! We are _not_ having a family. We just can't."

"By the way you describe events, I find it hard to believe he's incapable of—"

"No, I just meant that…well, you know what I mean! He and I are pirates, we're sailors—explorers, we have no blue blood to hand down, or family names, or titles, or social standing, we don't even money—it's just whatever we take or sell as far as gold is concerned. We could die. On any. Given. Day. That's not a life that would suit a child, and certainly one that—"

"You want children though." I threw my tea cup at her and she caught it. this only added to my anger as I stormed up to my room. all my things were on the ship still, and God only knows where that may be, so I had nothing but a pouch of gold to grab before going into Lizzie's room, taking a pocket knife from her bedside drawer and cutting myself free of that damned corset. I stole some of her sailing clothes, braided my hair and used some ashes from the fire place lightly on my face to hide the fact that my skin was far too smooth for a boy and I was out the backdoor before she could find me.

There was one other thing that I could use though, and I'd have to go back into town to the blacksmith shop to get that.

Opening the door to the shop slowly, making sure there was no one else inside I went straight for the mill wheel gears to find Will's collection of swords and rapiers. Taking up one that looked much like mine (taken by Angelica Teach) I held it out, twirled it a little and tossed it by the hilt from my right hand, to my left and back again, getting a feel for it and its weight.

"Going somewhere dangerous?" at that moment, I think that I'd rather be with dear old dad on the _Flying Dutchman_ taking orders from Sir Squidy.

"Will, I was just—"

"You're leaving, aren't you?"

"No."

"What ship?"

"Whatever one will take me."

"There's a merchant going east, back to Bristol. They need a few new hands and I said that a friend of my last apprentice would like to sail. You're second navigator for the _Dolphin_. She sails at noon." I must have standing a little agape, because when I went to speak, my mouth felt dry.

"You—You arranged for me to leave?"

"I have no control of you anymore, you're a married woman."

"I—but this is—never mind… Thank you."

"You'll see us again?"

"When the tides take us back, I like to come by every so often." It had been almost two years since the last time I was here, but I had an entire world to travel. Only after I've seen it all once, could I afford to spend the time to go see things again—but oh, hell, does it matter when you've all the time in the world? Nowhere to go, nowhere to be? Pirate's life and all that?

After the third week on the _Dolphin_ and not so much as a sighting of a black sailed ship, I was coming close to giving up. At least until the ship gave up for me during a storm. The poor little vessel should have been doomed but by some stroke of luck we sailed out, the crew, even in the rain, and even with the first mast having been lost, were cheering as if delivered from the devil—when his horns came up out of the sea.

By the looks of things, I was going to get that visit with daddie after all.

"The little bird can't fly away forever. Where is the Sparrow?" I am _dead_. I am worse than dead. I'm screwed _and_ dead.

"I told you sir, we have no one by that name aboard." The captain said a little too boldly. I shut my eyes tight, but I couldn't block the sound of a rough edged, barnacle encrusted blade cutting through the flesh and veins of his throat before the thudding of his body going over the side of the ship.

"I'll ask ye again; _where is Sparrow_?" I looked up and down the row of sailors on the deck, as they all did the same. "Who was the last to sign on?" a powder monkey pointed first, right at me, then all the others did.

"For the love of…" I pulled my hair out of the braid, gave up trying to walk like a man, and didn't use a deep voice when I spoke. "Here. So tell me, Jones, what is it that Jack did this time?"

"The Pearl's gone down. Her captain with it." it was as if a musket ball shot a hole the size of my fist through my chest. I had natural sea legs but I was finding that I couldn't stand up. "they had something of mine. something very important."

"Then bring them back! Why is it my problem!"

"Where's the key?" Good Lord, not this again.

"You have it. The chest is at World's End, you have the key, the maps are…" actually, I don't know where the maps are. Probably better that I didn't, because I needed something to bargain with,

"I've not see that key since that ship was taken down,"

"As I said, bring them back, I'll take the key, and then I'll give you the key, then we'll on be on our way."

"The _Black Pearl_ is mine—"

"Yeah, I heard that before, but the funny thing is last time I checked the captain's cabin belongs to me and Jack, not you and Calypso." I knew it was a low blow. I knew that he was probably going to kill me for this. but, that arrogant stupid little voice in me that didn't know when to quit when I was ahead spoke for me and it said that I could push Jones a little farther.

What I didn't think of at all though, was the fact that his crew was listening. Which included one William Turner the first. Which means that I just told my father that I was sleeping with Jack.

Lovely.

I inwardly swore and bit my lip, as two crewmen dragged me back over to the _Dutchman_.

"Get you slimy fins off me." I said slapping the…fins/hands of the shark-man-fish person who was on my left. The captain's quarters of the ship was as I remembered it: algae coated, dripping stagnant seawater, and a kelp encrusted organ that took up half the space.

"What do I have to do to get back my ship." I asked, keeping my face and voice stone cold—Jones used emotions to make the best out of his bargains (at least for him, he caused the other party as much pain as he could).

"_My_ ship and my infernal key went down in the Sargasso." I didn't know if Jack had that key, the last time I saw it was Isle Cruces, but if ink for brains thought that he had it, then it was something to convince him to bring back the _Pearl_—and her crew.

"Any survivors?"

"The kraken leaves none."

"Tell your pet to go to hell. And I'd say tell that to yourself, but you're on already on a fast route to fire."

"You're coming along with me unless I get that key."

"I'd need a ship and crew to search."

"Prisoners are easier to search when we're dead." It was a new brand of code that was on the rise amongst the pirates that were not yet brought down by the Company, desperate times called for desperate measures, and so many were forgetting the gentleman pirate code of honor.

"But they can't tell you where the object of interest is if they no longer have it."

"I'll put you on that ship, you bring back my key or you stay there and die." Dying with my ship, my crew and my _captain_ seemed a far better outlook than my current station.

"How long do I have?"

"A day."

"A week."

"Three days, or the _Black Pearl_ will go down as planned."

"Raise her and I'll get your damned key."

"I'm not raising anything or anyone. That twice dead bastard can continue rotting until I get my key."

"Then how am—"

"I'll leave you three days before she sank." He pushed past me, and went on deck, shouting orders at the crew. For about a minute I was alone, letting his last words sink in. _before she sank_…meaning I'd have to have been here over a week ago. I knew that this ship could sail underwater, against the wind, and through storms like a hot knife through cream but…time travel?

I said I was alone for about a minute, and that was because I soon heard a pair of heavy, dripping footsteps.

"My Clara. My youngest, my only daughter. The young lady I left under the care of her mother and brother—"

"While you went out to have fun pirating." I normally wasn't bitter at him for what he did. It was done, gone, in the past and couldn't be changed; but I knew that this was going to turn into an argument anyway, so I brought it up. He could have gotten a job with a merchant, in the navy, a private sailing company, or even found work on land, but he ditched us to go a pirating.

"Where's William?"

"Married, as I said last time I was here. Has a son now, William Turner III. Oh, don't ask me how but he's the bloody governor of Port Royal." I could almost here his next words _he's governor and you're pirate?_ I held back though, waiting for a response.

"And you're sailing under Jack's colors." Hearing his first name reminded me of that weird closeness that they used to have. I know that Jack used to be closer to Barbossa before things ran afoul there, and that he was close to Gibbs, but he refused to call anyone 'friend' and never spoke of relations with crewmen other than the two boys and Arabella he sailed with as a lad.

"Will's not your only married child." I said through gritted teeth.

"You and Jack?" was all he said before stopped for a few very, very long seconds. It made sense where he was coming from with that shock. First off, Jack was sailing on the _Pearl _before I was even born (I still don't know the exact age difference, and I still don't _want_ to know), second while my father must have held some level of respect for him to do so, he still died defending jack.

"About two years ago."

"Clara…Davy Jones has taken—"

"He's taking me back. I have three days to find his key before we all go down again."

"Jones swore to me you're alive!"

"I am! I wasn't on board when the ship went down—"

"Jack's gotten one of our lives, don't give him anymore. You, Will, your mother and I all ready to die without reason for him and do you think he'd ever return the favor?"

"Mum? She knew about all this?"

"She knew about pirating, yes, it's in her blood as much as in mine. Her parents were." I knew little of her parents—I knew almost nothing of her mother except that she was a mix of French and Italian and of her father only that he was a born American colonist and wasn't the best man in the world. "he's using you."

"That's not—"

"Don't try and tell me I don't know him, because I sailed with him for almost a decade. Don't try and tell me that you're anything more than a private… God, Clara! How could you do this?"

"I'm all that he's seen since—"

"And you bought that?"

"I _believed_ that."

"Mr. Turner!"

"Clara I won't see you coming to the same end of Bonny and Calico." According to the news, calico was drunk with his crew when the navy came and arrested them all, leaving Anne Bonny (his wife) and her friend Mary Read to fend for themselves. Anne claimed to be with child to avoid hanging and they escaped. Calico was hung under James's command. The official report though, read that they both died in prison, one of fever and the other in childbirth.

"Last time I saw Anne and Mary they were off to the states. Joining the revolution. I swear, they'll be their own country by 1770."

"And who will get your skin out of jail?"

"my brother is the governor. I'm untouchable." I made a gesture with my hands, and my sleeve fell just enough up my arm that he could see the tattoo.

"What is _that?"_

"Blue ink." I said trying to walk around him.

"If that oversized octopus doesn't get there first, so help me I'll gully him myself!" two crewmen grabbed a hold of me as I tried to escape from my father's comments on my marriage.

"Clara, don't get hurt." Was the last thing I heard from him as I was dragged back up to Jones , who gave a wicked grin of no humor to me, before I blacked out, waking up in the water.

**Bonus points to the one who noticed the quote from **_**Sweeney Todd.**_** Also, when I said that chapter ten went on for forever, this is what I meant: the original chapter nine ended when Clara gets on the **_**Dolphin**_**. I figured that it would be far too long for one chapter, so I cut it apart. Also I did twist around the story of Bonny and Read for this story, so I suggest you read the real bio's of the two of the golden age of piracy's leading ladies. **


	13. Chapter 13

**This chapter of **_**Price of Freedom**_** has been postponed until the following chapter due to triskaidekaphobia.**

**If you would like to know why, I'd use the internet search engine referred to as Google for further help, thank you.**

**With all due respect,**

**The Author.**


	14. Arabella?

**This one's interesting because we finally see a little bit of Captain Sparrow's perspective on the relationship between him and Clara. Not just fluff, there is plot development in here. I do not own pirates. The part of the chapter in between the page breaks is third-person narration of Jack's thoughts. **

"I told ye she's a real siren, how else would she get all the ways out here? We haven't seen a ship for days." Was the first voice I heard as I started hearing things, and soon my vision blurred from black to reality.

"Aye, she must have been in the water for at least three days." _Three days_ I remembered

"Jack! Where is he?" I asked looking around at the still cloudy images of the crew. There were some crude things muttered and laughed about, me wanting Jack being the first thing I said since I came around.

"here, love." He said helping me stand up, and leading me back to the cabin. "How the blazes did you get all the way out here?"

"I just couldn't wait any longer." I said shrugging; he took off my sodden shirt and I dizzily leaned over for my water logged boots.

"For what?" he was searching my eyes for something. I couldn't tell him what was going on just yet, he'd brush it aside saying I just swallowed too much salt water.

"oh I think you know." he wasn't a dream, a mirage; none of my dreams could touch me like that, none of them could extract the pleasant shivers his kisses sent down my spine. I laid down on the center of the bed, he hovered over me "I'm yours." I said because if this was the last night, then…

I let him do whatever he wanted that night and get away with things I never did before. One day gone already; if the key wasn't here our days were numbered…

All this and it ended here, at the hands of Davy Jones, my father in a front row seat. And for what? For a man that I didn't even know if he loved me? Perhaps I sound too mellow dramatic, but it's true. Jack might keep me around, I might have been the lass he liked the most, the best wench in the cabin and a sailor worth her salt. I kept up my skills in navigation and swordplay, because of James I knew more about the navy's inner workings than Jack or Gibbs's outdated knowledge, because of my brother I not only might as well have a skeleton key to every jail cell in Port Royal but influence in London if we ever were sent to court. I was _valuable_. I had political usage, I could sail a galleon almost single handedly, and I was a _woman_. A woman who was insatiably in love with her captain. I didn't want to let myself fall asleep, and I tried to stay awake but exhaustion from my weeks on a merchant vessel's schedule, my near drowning (you'd think I'd be used to nearly drowning by now), and from the night's engagement finally won and I wasted at least three hours sleeping.

With out her on board life on the _Black Pearl_ went back to how it was before he meant her, before he even ended up at Isla de Muerta with her brother and Elizabeth Swann (whom he tried—and for the most part succeeded—in forgetting), and far before those thirteen long years when he was without his beloved ship. It was like those old days of pirating—true and honest pirating: drinking, entertaining port wenches, selling stolen jewels and for gold and sailing supplies. Life was simple once again. Simple and…dull. The crew didn't feel any difference, but Jack was the one in the empty cabin each night. Jack was the one so used to her soft breathing at night. And the fact that that was the first thing about her that he realized he missed concerned him. It wasn't the way she could seduce him by just standing in the same room—or even how they slept together; it wasn't even that she had the connections to get them freed from any prison as long as her brother had contact with her, or the fact that she knew a ship like the back of her hand, knew the navy inside out and could navigate her way through unexplored waters without even a compass to guide her.

Sure, the fact that she had bluntly told him he wouldn't do more than kiss her until he married her; and sure the main reason he married her was for less than honorable reasons. Didn't mean he didn't like her, he always liked her. It was just slightly strange—after all he had sailed with both her parents, knew her brother, kissed her sister-in-law, and good Lord, she was _young_. A little thing. So perhaps—what was it, twenty three?—wasn't all that young, but he got a year older each year too. And now, now she wanted children. He wasn't stupid, he played as if he believed every word she said, that she didn't want a family, she'd rather be tied down to a navy officer and be childless than have a pirate's life and have to bear and rear her own protégée. He knew she wanted children when he said they'd find an orphan for their successor. As much as it would be so, _so_ like her to want to care for a lad or lass with no family of their own, she was depressed, he saw it in her eyes, that the successor would not be their blood.

When they fished her out of the sea, he didn't ask how or why but when he took her back to the cabin and she kissed him, he didn't even think—he, Jack bloody Sparrow—of leading her to the silk sheeted double in the center of the room but just wanted to keep looking her, at her eyes and seeing how much like seawater they were. She was the sea. She was everything. She was the pearl in the ugliness of the pirate world and the navy world; that glimmer of beauty and…absolute _pricelessness…_ that made searching threw and being amongst and working with all those ugly rough oysters worth it.

Now she was lying, in her sleep she started to cling to the sheets. Something wasn't right, he knew that when she let him have his way with her, she never let him do some of those things, or do things those…_ways_ before. the look of uneasiness on her face was almost childish, that same look of unease she had during those first two weeks together. He pulled her up and she responded even in her sleep, resting her head on his shoulder. There was something she was afraid of—afraid to death of.

"'S alright, luv."

"We need to talk…"

"Those are four words no man ever wants to hear." He replied. I was sitting in bed still, my kimono covering up my sorry excuse for a nightdress, he was sitting on his desk chair, a half finished map of the Florida Keys in front of him.

"I didn't just fall over board when I got here. Davy Jones brought me."

"Lass, are you sure that you—"

"It really happened. As insane as this sounds…all of this already happened. Jones's leviathan brought down the _Pearl…_ Crew… and captain along with her." I felt sick, in my stomach, my head and my heart as I told him. "He wants the key to the chest. Said that if I could find it in three days—two now—he'd leave us be."

"I don't have that key. In fact I haven't seen that key since—"

"Isla Cruces." I finished for him, but for half a second there was look of disagreement on his face that I noticed.

"Exactly."

"No, you were going to say something else. Look, I'm not about to let you take Jones's place or use his heart as a tool in a navy negotiation," because those both worked _so_ well the _first_ time… "If we don't come up with that key we're all dead."

"Last I saw of it was shipwreck cove."

"Lovely. Now we have to go and avoid getting shot by Teague. Or the gaurds. Or any visiting pirate lords. Not to mention, we'd have to get to the other side of the globe in two days."

"In other words we're dead either way."

"No, we're double dead."

"You are. I'm…" he paused, "Four times dead."

"I thought you were a sparrow, not a cat."

"I've been called a dog. Never a cat. Actually, there was a rather bad experience with a cat, the bunch of lads I sailed with? One of them had the foulest beast…looked dead, didn't smell much better, swore it was his sister under a voodoo—"

"Lads? What of Arabella?" I asked. Sometimes I thought that he had invented her character up just to entertain me, because she was so uncannily like me the way she acted and spoke.

"Clare, you know you were never mad about her right?" I nodded. This couldn't be going anywhere good "Seeing as there's only a little while I left…Remember how I said that she married a pirate?"

"Yeah, most pirate girls do."

"And she had two children. Both pirates." As it started to sink in, I could feel my jaw drop slightly.

"Please tell me this isn't a nice way of saying I might be your daughter."

"Hell no, Clare! I have _some_ standards!"

"Good." My _mum_ sailed with him? My mum was the lass he was so close to as a lad? "Tell me she was older than you; by at least a couple years."

"Don't know."

"Probably for the better." I said. Arabella's mother was a pirate, her father a born colonial. I knew that my mother's father was American and her mother half French and half Italian. I knew that my father's parents were English, his father a merchant before him until he took to pirating. But there was one thing that I didn't like.

"Arabella had siren blood in her from her mother's side."

"Aye,"

"I have diluted siren's blood?"

"You knew that." yeah, but I didn't know that I _actually_ had it

"I thought it was a bedtime story my mum told me! not real! So what, am I going to grow gills or something?"

"Luv there's worse things to worry about right now than—"

"If I sprout a tail I don't know how I'm going to partake in your favorite _activities_."

"We'll make it a priority as soon as we find the key; we'll sail to Europe, see what we can find on your ancestry. Good enough?"

"For now it's all we can do." I sat up enough to open the curtains and look out at the sun coming up over the water. "What about the key? We can't get it, so we have to talk to Jones." I asked, in a quiet, almost rhetorical tone.

"I think you're forgetting who _you're_ talking to, love." I bit my tongue to keep from retorting.

"_You_ can talk your way out of anything—but I think that Davy Jones and my father will win this time." Angry undead parent and angry undead octopus/ghost person.

"What about Bill Turner?" he asked, showing slightly more concern than he did when I told him he'd be dead in two days.

"I might have said that I've been making my bed in Captain Sparrow's." I said, fully ashamed. Jack laughed.

"Never had to deal with the parents before,"

"Careful, where do you think my temper came from?"

"Arabella"

"Wrong answer." I remembered no temper in my mother, but I've seen my father's temper.

"There is no time to lose," but even as he was saying it, he was pulling me up from the bed and lifting me to his height.

"We're dead. If we spend another five heartbeats here, I don't think it will make much of a difference." I said setting a finger over his lips. The corners of his mouth turned up and I'm sure I was mirroring him. "Are you going to kiss me or not?" he held me close and dare I say it, _tenderly_ and kissed me gently.

There wasn't much that we could do, but wait for the end. He didn't tell the crews, but they wanted to know something else. I saw different members talking to him throughout the day and I knew that they wouldn't openly discuss me when I was around so when the bell rang out for the dinner bell (the navy and merchant ships had bells to mark the watches, but we used the bell for dinner and wakeup calls).

"Jack, I'm not hungry; go ahead down, I'm going to bed." Before he had the chance to ask, I added "Don't skip out on a pint of rum and sea stories just for an extra hour with me because I'm going straight to sleep."

"Alright, luv." I waited until I could hear the laughing down in the galley before I crept over to the hatch that led below decks to listen.

First I heard was general laughing and carrying on, but then I could hear the bo'sun's voice finishing a rather…burlesque story that he had been entertaining them with. So I guess when the girl's not around their tall tales aren't all navy battles and exotic islands. Pigs…

"Aye, Cap'n Jack was there he'd tell ye 'bout 'em." Cap'n Jack better not have been wherever he was talking about. There was a chorus of 'yeah, tell us!' and the like before he started talking.

"Madagascar. Island speaks for herself." That's it?

" Too bad for ye, Jack, that wench of yours threatens yer life when ye so much as gander in a woman's direction." They all laughed at him and I bit my tongue while trying to figure out whose voice it was so I could remember to put itching powder in his hammock.

"Why did ye take 'er on here Jack?" Gibbs. I added his name to the hit list in my head "Ye never tried to keep the governor's daughter around, or that woman from Seville." Everyone started to echo his question and I held my breath.

"Gents, everyone here enjoys women as well as the next pirate would?" there was a chorus of 'aye's and 'yeah's and he continued "Women are like liquor. There's good ones, poor ones, cheap ones…" the crew was laughing, and I was too engrossed in what he was trying to get at to assume ahead, "But if you could only choose one to drink for the rest of your life, you'd choose the sweetest rum of the islands. Wouldn't it be better to drink the best for eternity than to never taste it and spend forever sampling all the lesser wines and whiskies?" it was no declaration of love, and in fact I couldn't tell if he was referring to physical aspects of only having the best, or just that I was all around the best, but still it was the closest thing I'd ever heard from him to not regretting—or even enjoying—the fact that he was stuck with me for good.

I went to bed that night, tired, scared for what was to come with the end of the next day, and upset that I wouldn't ever hear the words 'I love you' from the man that I chose but my heart was at the same time lightened by what I had heard eavesdropping in the galley.

**Hopefully, you caught the line about "pricelessness," referring to the title and motif of the story. Not to insult my readers, but just in case you only skimmed it I wanted to point it out.**

**With all due respect,**

**Iheartmoony7 AKA person who has read too much Lemony Snicket while writing this :P AKA future Mrs. Captain Jack. Or if I can't get him to commit, than the future Mrs. Eleventh Doctor**


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